


For Suddenly I Saw You There

by mardia



Series: Reichenbach Falls [3]
Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, OT3, Panic Attacks, Returning Home, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-09 02:56:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 66,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16441673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mardia/pseuds/mardia
Summary: Peter Grant returns from the dead, and starts the longer process of returning home.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> oh my God, it's FINISHED. FINALLY.
> 
> Huge thanks to jamjarring for their excellent beta-work, to angelsaves for their good-humored tolerance of my constant whining, and to eveyone on twitter and tumblr who encouraged and nagged me to finish this monster of a story already. (Title is from Billie Holliday's A Foggy Day.)

The first thing I’m aware of is the patter of rain hitting my skin. Little drops of cold water, hitting my body in random patterns--that’s the first thing I notice. The other stuff starts to creep in afterwards, realizing that I’m lying on a hard surface--pavement--that I’m lying on pavement while being totally naked, not a stitch of clothing to be found, that the hum of voices, the shuffle of foot traffic, of cars going past, means that I’m in public, and worse, means there’s a crowd gathering around me, while I lay naked on a busy street. 

I open my eyes, and I’m, I’m--

I’m _home_. In London, the real London, not the shadowy replica that’s been my prison for God knows how long. I’m home and I’m real again, in a body that feels solid, that can feel the scrape of pavement against my bare skin, that can register cold, that--is completely fucking exposed in front of a crowd of strangers, Jesus Christ. I move to sit up, and the people nearest me take a step back, wary of the strange man who has the nerve to lie down starkers in the middle of a busy street in what appears to be midday.

Hastily covering myself, I peer around me, realizing that I’m on London Bridge, right where this all fucking started, but praise God, there’s not a whisper of Mr. Punch to be found. No cackling laughter echoing in my head. At least that’s one success to be put down at my doorstep, mine and Sir William Tyburn’s. 

God, how long have I been out? It can’t have been that long, it still looks to be springtime in London--by which I mean cool and drizzling, so maybe I’ve been only gone for a little bit. A few days, maybe. 

But somehow I know better than to believe that. 

Dimly, I realize that the crowd around me isn’t acting right--there should be more jeering if nothing else, and more smartphones out. But the way everyone is watching me, the awe and fear on their faces...

And then I hear a voice shouting, “Oi, lemme through, dammit--” And then, bursting between a white middle-aged lady and a bike messenger is Zach freaking Palmer, scrawny and scruffy as ever, his gaze lighting on me before his face splits ear to ear with a huge grin. “Fucking hell, I _knew_ it,” he whoops triumphantly. “I fucking knew the starling would be returning back to London. Been hanging around this stupid bridge all week waiting, and here you are. Took you fucking long enough, mind, those birds have been going mental for the past three fucking days--”

“Zach,” I interrupt hastily, because Zach’s making even less sense than normal. To my alarm, even the sight of his face is enough to fill me with relief, being as it’s both familiar and, if not exactly friendly, at least not openly hostile. “Not that I’m not pleased to see you too, but what the hell is going on?”

Zach throws his arms out wide. “You’ve fucking come home, fam,” he says to me. “Risen back from the dead and everything.” He peers at me a little more closely and adds, approvingly, “With a wicked chest scar and everything too.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice sounding faint. “Dead?”

Zach lets his arms drop, and views me with a concerned air. “Oh. Shit. You are well out of it, aren’t you?”

“Clearly,” I say, holding onto my patience with both hands. “Look, just--” I accidentally catch the gaze of the middle-aged lady standing next to Zach, who’s eyeing me up with far too much interest for my liking, and I flush. “Fucking hell, Zach, before you get started, get me something to wear.”

“Oh, right!” 

To give Zach some credit, he hastily scrambles out of his worn denim jacket and hands it to me, along with giving me a hand so I can lever myself up to my feet. Ignoring the slightly.. .odd smell of the jacket, I quickly wrap it around my waist so as to preserve what little remains of my dignity. Tying the sleeves around my hip, I ask, “Zach--not that I’m not pleased to see you, but what the hell is going on? How long--” I stop, then force the words past my lips, “How long have I been gone?”

Zach’s eyes go huge in his face, and I see the moment it hits him that being first on the scene isn’t so great when it means you’re the one who has to provide some answers. “Well,” he starts, “--the good news is, you’re not Sleeping Beauty, so it hasn’t been a century.”

“Zach.”

“Bad news is, you’ve been gone for a year, and just about everyone thinks you’re dead,” Zach finishes quickly, wincing. “But on the positive side--you’re back? And clearly you’re not dead, so you know, positives all around.”

I stare at him, speechless, and of course that was the moment when two police constables finally arrived on the scene, walking towards us briskly, both of them with professionally blank look that, had the circumstances been even a little bit less bizarre, or less upsetting to me on a personal level, I might have applauded. “All right sirs, what seems to be going on here?” the female constable asks us both. 

I set my teeth and prepare myself to dive in. I’ve got no ID and no clothes, and I’m accompanied by Zach Palmer, who certainly isn’t going to enhance my standing--but I’ve still got to get through this. 

And all I need is to get to Nightingale, and to the Folly. Everything else can work itself out after that’s done. “Constable, I’m DC Peter Grant, with the SAU. This is a Falcon case, and as you can see, I don’t have my Airwave, so I’ll need you to call this in and--”

The PC clearly has stopped listening to me, as she pales beneath her freckles. “I’m sorry,” she says, faintly, “--did you say _Falcon_?”

“Yes,” I confirm, trying hard not to let my eyebrow fly up at the look of total alarm on her face.

"Oi," Zach says, deciding to insert himself into the proceedings. "Look, this here is Peter Grant, yeah? The Starling--" I could just hear the capital S in his voice, "--apprentice to the Nightingale, and the cause of all that mess with the birds this past week, and oh yeah--he's just come back from the dead." Zach pauses for a moment, then adds brightly, "But not in a zombie way, though, I don't think."

The look on the PC's face at hearing all this is a _picture_ , and I can't blame her in the least. 

"I'm calling this in," the PC says at last. 

"Please do," I say. "And make sure that Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale is informed."

While the PC makes the call on her Airwave, I'm left to stand about in my bare feet, nearly naked, with only Zach Palmer to answer the dozens--hundreds--of questions I've got rattling about in my head. 

I pick one that seems the least likely to make my head explode. "What were you talking about earlier, with the birds?"

Zach's face lights up. "Oh!" He rummages in the pocket of his jeans and then pulls out a iPhone. "You have to see this, it's amazing. Well, I mean, you caused it after all."

The 'it', as it turns out, is a Youtube video, camerawork shaky, of a flock of starlings moving in midair over the Thames, dipping and rising in perfect unison, as though they were a hive, moving with one mind. The sight is beautiful and eerie, and something in me twists at the sight of it. 

"I didn't do this," I tell him, and at Zach's disbelieving look, amend, "Well, I didn't _mean_ to do this, I don't remember--" I try to grope for a memory, but my recollection of my--my time away has already seemed to grow muddled, cloudy. I think, I'm almost positive I remember Sir William saying to me at one point, _Don't worry, they'll know you're coming home_ , but even that's vaguer than I'd like. 

"Well, it happened whether you meant it to or not. For the last three days straight, at the same time each day, at same spot, ever since the anniversary of your death--or disappearance, I suppose," Zach tells me. 

Jesus. I stare down at the phone, and then the question comes out of me, almost without my knowledge, "Is everyone alright? My mum, Beverley, Nightingale--everyone, they're okay?"

Zach's eyes go wide, and then a sympathetic look appears on his face. "Yeah, mate. They're all good. Your mum's started working for the Folly, as a secretary, I think? And your cousin's gone and officially joined as an apprentice. The Nightingale's still around, the Folly's still standing. Your girlfriend's all right too," he says, and then adds as an afterthought, "Well, she's more terrifying than she used to be, but that's to be expected."

The relief at hearing everyone's all right is enough to make me go weak at the knees, even as my ears prick at the mention of Beverley--terrifying, what the hell does that mean? But I don't get a chance to press him on it, as I hear sirens approaching, and there's an ambulance coming down the bridge towards us.

There's something depressingly fitting about my return being marked by the sound of ambulance sirens. At least I can't be blamed for any collapsing buildings--at least not yet. 

To my surprise, Zach decides to stick around while the paramedics check me over, wrapping me up in a shock blanket. As the female paramedic hands Zach's jean jacket back to him, his eyes narrow, and then widen in recognition. "Esme!"

The paramedic, who appears to be South Asian and, upon closer look, part-fae, rolls her eyes. "Palmer, will you back off and let us do our jobs here?"

Zach is clearly past paying attention. "Esme, look, it's Grant. It's the starling, he's returned."

"Yes, Zach, you've won the pool, congratulations," Esme says wearily, then at my surprised look, explains, "There's been a betting pool at the Chestnut Tree, Zach won it."

"Not that I'm not pleased to have you back," Zach quickly interjects. "I'm just also pleased to be five hundred pounds richer. Should've gotten in on it, Esme."

Esme rolls her eyes as she strips the pressure cuff off my arm, my blood pressure having met with her approval. "I'll settle for not pissing off Beverley Brook--or the Nightingale," she adds, as an afterthought. "I’d prefer not to be drowned any time soon."

 

"But it's fine _now_ ," Zach protests, gesturing at me. "Look at him."

Esme sighs loudly, and looks over at me. "Do I have your permission to tell him to fuck off?" she asks. 

"Sure," I say, and turn to Zach. "Thanks for the jacket. And--" I hesitate, but I've seen far too much sci-fi not to be cautious, and so I say next, "Do me a favour, though-- stop by the Folly. In case they haven't gotten word yet."

"Will do," Zach says, and the tosser actually gives me a salute. A sloppy one, but there it is. "Thanks for the five hundred quid, mate." 

As Zach disappears into the crowd, presumably to collect his winnings and hopefully to send word to the Folly that I've returned, a blue Porsche pulls out of traffic to park itself right next to the ambulance.

Tyburn steps out of the driver's seat, and without quite meaning to, I can feel my spine straightening as she looks me over. 

Before I'd disappeared, before that last deadly confrontation with Martin Chorley, my relationship with Ty had come a long way. Dating Bev had helped, sure, but what had actually turned things around was when I'd finally managed to finish the big, sprawling paper on modernizing the Folly. Not that I'd had much of a chance of implementing most of those changes, as the hunt for Chorley and Lesley had heated up. 

Maybe they'd pushed those changes through, after I had... not-died.

As she walks over to us, a part of me wants to ask if Sir William had sent her. I refrain, but only just barely. "Hello, Tyburn."

Tyburn doesn't say anything, just looks at me, her mouth pursed. When she finally speaks, it's to Esme, saying in a brisk tone, "You'll need to take him to the A&E at St. Thomas. They'll be able to take things from there."

"I'm sorry?" Esme says, in a fainter voice than before. Clearly the appearance of Ty on the scene has impressed her, even more than my miraculous return from...where I was. 

"What kind of things?" I ask, and Ty turns her attention back to me. 

"There's a protocol that needs to be observed," she says, calmly. "Your sudden...reappearance needs to be handled properly and in private, not as some public sideshow on London Bridge."

I don't actually have a real objection to that. What's got me tense is the fact that it's Tyburn delivering this decree, rather than the plain-clothes officers I can see have also arrived on the scene. 

But then, Tyburn's the one on the scene, and I can't argue with her. Not when I know she's not wrong.

"So I'm to be poked and prodded until you can prove I'm the genuine article, is that it?" I ask, keeping my voice as steady as I can.

"You can't have expected anything else, Peter," Ty says to me. 

"No, I suppose not," I agree. All those carefully-cherished fantasies of simply walking into the front door of the Folly, walking into Bev's house on the riverbank, or my mum's flat at Peckwater, of just being able to go _home_ \--

It's just a delay, I know that. I'm already home. But my stomach's sinking down to my feet anyway.

Tyburn's expression doesn't change, but her voice gentles just a touch as she says, "You'll see Nightingale soon, Peter, I promise."

"And Beverley," I say, looking back at her. 

Ty pauses, but then agrees. "And my sister too."

"All right," I say, although I know there's no other option to go along with Ty's plans. "St. Thomas it is, then."

*

Being poked and prodded, it turns out, was an understatement. I've had six vials of blood taken so far, I've been fingerprinted, I've had my cheek swabbed for a DNA test, hair plucked from my head for yet another DNA test, and I'm currently lying flat on my back, undergoing what promises to be the first of many MRIs. The doctors and nurses they've got assigned to my case are professional but wary, and from the way their eyes flick up to look at me when they think I'm not looking tells me they know something of my story, even if it's not the full truth.

 

They're all fascinated with the puckered scar on my chest, right above my heart, and its corresponding scar on my back. “This isn't listed on your records,” one of the nurses, a older white woman with her gray hair pulled back in a bun, says. She's got a faint Eastern European accent--Polish would be my guess. “Where--can you tell me what caused this?”

I briefly consider lying, but instead I go for nothing less than the truth. “A spear,” I tell her.

Her mouth opens briefly in shock, and for a second I think she's going to press me for more, but in the end she just says, “I see,” and makes a note on her clipboard, carefully tilted so I can't read it.

I don't know her. Just like I don't know any of the doctors or nurses that have come through. For all I know Dr. Walid's come barreling over from UCH and is hovering outside the door right now, for all I know Dr. Vaughan's the one reviewing every test result as it comes back in--but I haven't seen them, or Nightingale, or Beverley, or Guleed or Seawoll or Stephanopoulos—Christ, not one familiar face. Even Tyburn's disappeared to who knows where. 

I keep my temper as best as I can, I hang on to my patience as best as I can. 

But when the MI-5 spooks show up in my hospital room, my patience is put through its own battery of tests. I had wanted to see familiar faces, but these are not the ones I had in mind.

"Hello, Finula. Arthur," I say, keeping things polite. 

"DC Grant, it's good to see you," Finula says politely. "If rather unexpected."

Arthur just nods his head, taciturn as ever. Underneath the harsh lighting, I can see that his blond hair is thinning. 

"What can I do for my favorite spooks?" I ask, giving them both a winning smile. Arthur just squints at me, mouth pursed, while Finula gives me a faint smile, but it's one that doesn't reach her eyes. 

"We need you to undergo an assessment," Finula explains, and when I pointedly look down at my hospital gown, she adds, "It's a questionnaire, just so we can note your account of...recent events."

Like my sudden resurrection back to the land of the living. 

"All right," I say, like I actually have any choice, like I have the option to refuse. Let's get started then."

Finula and Arthur both pull the rickety hospital chairs right up to the bed that I'm perched on. Arthur pulls out a small moleskine, while Finula balances a tape recorder on her lap. 

Without anything to do with my hands, I fold them in my lap and wait. 

Once the tape recorder's on, Finula recites the date, time, and location in a dry tone, and then turns to me. "Please state your full name for the record."

"Peter Saikou Grant."

"Date of birth?"

"April 27th." With a jolt, I realize my birthday's coming soon, that I'll be a year older--well, two, technically, depending on how you'd count it. 

"Your father's name?"

I'm surprised at the quick spasm of grief that goes through me. "His name was Richard James Grant," I say. Of course, they could tell me that themselves, along with the exact date and time of his birth, death, and likely every place he'd traveled to in his lifetime, but I'm well aware that's not the point of this little exercise.

"And your mother's name?"

"Which one?" I ask them. "She's got two, you know." Finula just flicks one eyebrow upward, waiting, and I sigh. "My mother's birth name is Mamasu Kamara, she changed it to Rose when she came to the UK."

Arthur clears his throat. "And where were you born and raised?"

_I, Peter Grant of Kentish Town, do hereby swear to--_

I've paused for too long, both of them are looking at me now. "Sorry," I say. "Born in London. Raised on the Peckwater Estate in Kentish Town."

It goes on like that for a long while, tedious and exasperating in equal measure, as Finula takes me through the minutia of my life, Arthur taking note and squinting at me the entire time. We cover my time at Hendon, my apprenticeship with Nightingale, and finally, we get to the events of March 2017, and my final, deadly meeting with Martin Chorley. 

"I would've thought this would be in Nightingale's report," I say carefully. 

"It is," Finula says. "But it's your perspective we're looking to get."

"All right. Once the building was cleared, I went in, Chorley was there, we fought--"

"Physically?" Finula asks.

"No, with magic," I say, biting back any snottiness. "I told him I was arresting him on suspicion of murder, various acts of terrorism, conspiracy to commit murder, and told him to surrender. He didn't, we fought, and I killed him."

"Before the warehouse exploded," Finula pushes.

"Yes, before."

"So what caused the warehouse to explode?"

I stay silent, caught in the memory of that day, Chorley's nose and chin lengthening into that moon-shaped caricature, his voice rising up into that high-pitched cackle even as he shrieked in despair, "No, no, no!"

 

And then he’d rounded to face me, and I'd seen my moment, and I'd taken it. Everything else that came afterwards was--payment. 

"Peter?" Finula prods me, after a moment has passed. "Can you tell me what caused the warehouse to explode?'

"Mr. Punch," I say shortly. "He was--there, for lack of a better term. And very angry. He just happened to go after Chorley first.”

If Finula is frustrated with my vague answers, she gives no sign of it. “Why Chorley first?”

“He was...offended,” I say, slowly. “Chorley’s plans were about controlling Punch, harnessing him for Chorley’s grand schemes--except it’s Mr. Punch. He's the god of riot and rebellion in Merry Old England--you don't _control_ him. And once Chorley turned on Lesley, that was it so far as Punch was concerned.”

“So Chorley was sequestered by Mr. Punch,” Arthur says, scribbling away madly with his ballpoint pen. “That tracks with the damage we saw to the corpse’s face, at least.”

“And as he was being sequestered, you saw your chance,” Finula says. 

“Yes,” I say, tight-lipped.

“By beheading him with a magic spell,” Finula says.

“Yes.” I don’t say anything else, either as elaboration or excuse, because what can I say? I cut a man’s head off. Never mind that he was the most evil fucker I’d ever had the misfortune to meet, never mind that he’d cut a bloody swatch of pain and murder and mayhem through London--I had still cut off his head. After you admit to doing a thing like that, you can’t say very much else.

“And once Chorley was dead, what happened with Mr. Punch?” Finula asks me.

“He came for me,” I tell them.

The poker faces that greet me at this announcement are really impressive, it must be said. Yet that’s a tell in its own way, their still faces and still bodies signalling that if I were to get up and shriek, “That’s the way to do it!” and have my nose and chin twist and lengthen into that malevolent mask, they wouldn’t be surprised at all. 

Finula only says a single word in response. “How.”

“He wasn’t trying to sequester me,” I explain, because one word answers are just not going to cut it here, not at this point. “He wanted--he knew he wouldn’t be able to stay in this world, not like before. But he wanted to get his revenge against me, and so he did.”

Right on cue, Finula’s gaze drops to my chest, which is thankfully covered by my paper thin hospital gown. “The doctors mentioned you had a new scar,” she says, gently for her. 

“I do,” I confirm for them. “Mr. Punch gave it to me. When he plunged a spear through my chest and left me pinned at the center of London Bridge like a dead butterfly.”

There is a brief moment of silence while everyone absorbs this, and then Arthur says, carefully, “But not...the _actual_ London Bridge.”

“No,” I say. I try to keep my mind away from that moment of terror and pain, Mr. Punch cackling madly as he stabbed me through with the plinth. What it had felt like to scream and scream, knowing that no one could save me.

I try not to think of it, and I mostly fail—it’s only a question from Finula that drags me back to the present, to this reality, where I was eventually saved—first by Sir William Tyburn, and then by myself.

“Sorry,” I say through a suddenly dry mouth. “Could you repeat that?”

“Did you realize when you were...” Finula pauses, and then continues delicately, “elsewhere, how much time was passing?”

“No,” I tell her. “I thought—I hoped it wasn’t too long, maybe a few weeks at most but not, not a _year_.”

Sir William had been very circumspect, the few times I had asked him about it. The few times I had remembered to ask him about it. _Don’t worry so much_ , he’d always said. _“You’ll be home soon enough—just in time to catch your mum’s cooking, in fact.”_

“There you were, trapped in that reality, with Mr. Punch--what happened? What did you do for all that time?”

“Hunted,” I said slowly. For a moment I could feel the heft of a spear in my hand again. “I had help, though.” And I remembered Sir William whooping with a savage joy as he ran at my side, happy to have something to hunt again, happy to have a hunting partner. 

I’ll have to talk to Lady Ty about that. 

“And now you’re back,” Finula says. “Mind telling us how you managed that?”

I consider trying to explain all of it, the long fight to hang on to my memories, my self of self, to recall the oaths I’d made that still bound me. I considered trying to describe it, and decided to cut to the chase instead.

Besides. That’s not a story for these two. 

“I could,” I say, keeping my voice polite but brisk. “But I don’t think you’re really interested in that story. What you want to know is if I brought Mr. Punch back with me. If he’s lurking somewhere in the back of my head.”

No one says anything for a moment in response to that. I can see Finula looking me over, I can see Arthur glancing to check that he’s between me and the door. And I know, somewhere outside this room, is Lady Ty, that Nightingale is also somewhere in this building, waiting, preparing himself for--for whatever needs to be done. 

Finula is the one to break the silence, asking with a truly remarkable display of casualness, “Well? Is he there in your head right now?”

“No,” I say, but concede, “But there’s no way for you to know if I’m telling the truth, I understand that. What I’d suggest, if I were you, is bringing someone in who _can_ tell if I’m really myself, or if I brought company with me.”

“And who,” Finula asks, “would be able to do that? Inspector Nightingale, perhaps?”

“No,” I say in response, and I have the pleasure of watching Finula show a flicker of surprise at my answer. “You should talk to Lady Ty.”

*

By the time Ty finally shows up, my patience is fraying. I know why this is all happening, I even support it on a rational level, but God--I want to eat some food, I want to see something that isn’t the beige walls of this hospital room, I want to wear proper clothes instead of a hospital gown, I want--I want to go _home_. 

But then Tyburn steps into the room, and I know I’m getting closer. 

“I almost think I should be flattered,” Tyburn says lightly as she comes in. “Apparently you think I’m the one to tell if you’re the real deal after all.”

I give her a look. “No, I think you knew it was me the second you saw me on London Bridge this morning,” I say to her. 

Tyburn tilts her head. “Oh, I definitely knew it was you. Whether you brought someone else _with_ you is the question of the hour.”

“Well, you would know,” I say without thinking, and then have to keep from wincing as she gives me a hard look. 

“I suppose I would,” Tyburn says eventually. She takes a breath, and then briskly walks over to the bed. “All right. Give me your hand.”

I hesitate, and Tyburn raises her eyebrow at me. “This was your idea, Peter.”

“Yeah,” I admit, and after a moment, place my left hand in hers. Tyburn’s hand is cool to the touch, and I glance warily at her. “Okay, so what--”

“Shh,” Tyburn says. “Just be quiet, look into my eyes, and let me in.” Her voice was low, almost hypnotic, and in her dark eyes I could see rushing water. I exhaled, and stayed quiet and still, vaguely aware of the smell of meadowgrass tickling at my nose.

I don’t know how much time passed, exactly, but after what feels like only a few moments Tyburn blinks, her gaze sharpening as she comes back to herself. “I see you met William,” she murmurs. 

“Yeah, he was…” My throat tightens for a moment, remembering that last goodbye, William smiling at me as I recited my oath, kissing me goodbye on the forehead as he’d said, _“Give Cecelia my regards, all right?”_

“He was really helpful,” I say, clearing my throat. I look up at her as I add, “Wanted me to say hello to you.”

I can’t read the fleeting expression on Ty’s face, and don’t bother trying to decipher it. “Well,” she says softly, then shakes her head a little, as if to get ahold of herself. “I’m pleased to report that the only thing rattling around in your head is, in fact, you.”

“No echoes of Mr. Punch?” I press her.

“No echoes,” Tyburn confirms, and while it’s what I expected to hear, what I knew to be true--there’s still a relief in hearing someone else say it. Particularly someone with as much pull as Tyburn. I might actually get to leave UCH before my next birthday at this rate. 

I exhale, and before I can think twice, I ask, “How’s Beverley?”

I’m not imagining the brief pause before Tyburn answers me with, “She’s fine, Peter.” My eyebrows come together at this too-short answer, and Tyburn gives me a faint smile. “I promise, she’s all right. You...you’ll see her soon, she’s in Birmingham at the moment but I’m sure she’ll--”

“Birmingham?” 

No need to decipher the flash of irritation that moves across Tyburn’s face, although I’m sure I’m not the cause of it. “Yes, Birmingham. Don’t ask me for details on that--you’ll hear them soon enough.” Whatever irritation Tyburn’s feeling at Bev’s travel plans is clearly put to one side as she looks down at me, openly considering, before she says next, “Do you know...I’m genuinely relieved to have you back with us, Peter. For many reasons.”

Her eyes are sharp as she looks at me, and I try and fail to come up with a response, only to settle on a faint, “Thank you.”

Tyburn gives me another faint smile, and walks out without another word, the click of her heels the only sound in the room. Once the door shuts behind her, I let out a long breath, and I wait for Nightingale to appear. 

*

It’s not that I don’t know how long I’ve been gone, that in the year I’ve been away everyone I knew, everyone I loved, believed that I was dead. 

It’s just--it’s a hard thing to truly grasp, especially when I’ve been shut away in this hospital room, with no phone or TV or internet, no way for me to adjust to this reality where a year’s gone by. For all I know, self-driving cars are a legit thing right now, and not the malfunctioning toys of billionaires in Silicon Valley. Maybe we have a new monarch. Maybe Molly’s come out of the Folly and travelled the world. Maybe Nightingale--

But my mind shies away from thinking about that. Or about what Beverley’s been up to, what the reasons might be for Tyburn frowning at the mention of her, for Zach calling her terrifying. 

 

And then I hear the creak of the door opening, and I abruptly stop thinking of anything at all, because Nightingale is standing in the doorway, wearing a suit I recognize, silver-tipped cane in hand, presenting an image of perfect composure--that is, as long as you’re not looking at his face. As long as you don’t see how pale his cheeks are, the way his mouth is tightly pressed together, how his eyes are glittering with emotion.

I stumble to my feet, the tile of the floor cool against my bare toes. “You’re here,” I say dumbly. Looking at him right now, I can’t believe I thought I was gone for a few weeks.

“I’m--” Nightingale catches himself, biting his lower lip so hard I fear that he’ll draw blood. He stares at me, his gaze scanning every inch of my body before finally resting back on my face. 

He still hasn’t actually come inside the room. “You can come in,” I offer after a minute. “Tyburn’s made sure that it’s--that it’s safe.”

Nightingale’s nostrils flare at that, and then he abruptly takes two quick steps inside, shutting the door behind him, all while keeping his gaze locked on me. He grips his cane and says, his voice sounding like it’s coming from a far distance, “I’d like you to produce a werelight for me, if you would.”

Of all the things I pictured Nightingale saying when I came back home, this was definitely nowhere near the list. Yet how can I refuse, with Nightingale looking at me like that, so brittle that one good push might make him shatter? 

So I hold out my hand, and even though I’m years past needing to say the word out, I whisper, “ _Lux_ ,” and create a warm globe of light in the palm of my hand. I don’t bother with any variations, nothing at all flashy, just the werelight. And my _signare_ , the one thing that nobody can fake, that marks me as Nightingale’s apprentice, as a wizard of the Folly, as myself, as I’ve always been.

I can see the moment it hits Nightingale, the second that he recognizes it--his expression doesn’t change, but his eyes become wet, shining in the reflected light. 

I close my hand, not because I can’t keep the spell going but because my own vision’s grown blurred. “I--”

“Again, please.”

I hesitate before doing as he asks. “It really is me,” I say softly, hating the pleading note in my own voice, the way that I want him to stop holding himself with the parade-rest posture of a soldier, to just come and clap me on the shoulder, put an arm around me and say, “Well done, you can rest now, you’ve come home.”

It’s a selfish, self-centered wish, and I’m sorry for it the second that Nightingale’s face wavers, his jaw working from emotion before he asks me once more, “Again. Please.”

If I end up breaking the electronics in this place, Dr. Walid will never let me hear the end of it. I let out a slow breath, close my eyes, and wordlessly fill the room with dozens of tiny werelights bobbing in mid-air, the light kept to a dim glow so as not to blind us.

It’s a bit flashy, but that’s not important. What is important is what we can’t see in the room, the _vestigia_ I carry with me, that I’ve been told smells like fried plantain, that carries the heat of a hot summer afternoon and the faint sound of breaking glass--a carryover from my adventures on top of the Skygarden roof. 

Nightingale lets out a soft, low sigh as his shoulders slump, as if he’s finally put down a burden too great to carry. 

“Thomas,” I say, the name fitting easily in my mouth, like it’s the hundredth time I’ve called him that and not the first. “Thomas, I promise you, it’s really me.”

I start to walk towards him, slowly, the way you’d approach a skittish animal, my hand held out in front of me. Nightingale watches me step forward, but he’s not wearing that awful mask anymore, instead he’s watching me with a wondering look on his face, almost...almost awed, like I’ve performed the world’s most incredible trick and he can’t fathom how I did it. 

And then he starts to step forward to meet me, jerkily at first as if his legs refuse to work properly, and then--

And then Nightingale’s arm is around my waist and he’s leaning his weight against me, his face resting against my shoulder, his breathing coming in harsh gasps while I carefully, slowly bring up my hands and place them in the center of his broad back, letting the werelights extinguish as I do.

Nightingale and I have lived together for half a decade at this point, which brings its own sort of intimacy with it, whether you want it to or not. But this is--this is just overwhelming, being back in my real body, in this world, feeling the heat and strength of Nightingale’s body resting against mine, an anchor holding me to this spot.

My throat’s burning as I let my hand move in slow, soothing circles between his shoulder-blades, the reality of the situation crashing on my head. I was the last remaining apprentice of the Folly, and I went and fucking died on him. On all of them, Molly and Beverley and Abigail and, Christ help me, my own mother, who’d lost her husband just a year before her only son went and fucking disappeared. 

“I’m sorry,” I say very quietly, the words feeling hopelessly inadequate. “I swear I didn’t mean to go, and I really didn’t mean to be gone this long.”

I feel Nightingale take a deep, bracing breath, my hand rising and falling on his back as he drags air into his lungs, and then he says, his voice so quiet and still almost savage in its ferocity, “Don’t you _dare_ apologize to me, not for any of it. You...”

He still hasn’t moved. He hasn’t moved an inch, and I don’t think I could make myself move if I tried. 

“Christ,” Nightingale says, softly, and then suddenly steps back and away from me, scrubbing at his face with his hand as he says, jerkily, “I have--good God, I have to call your mother.”

And before I can say anything else, he’s leaving the room without a second look back at me. I slowly sit down on the edge of the bed, my legs unsteady, and fold my hands in my lap to keep from shaking. 

Nightingale reappears just a few moments later, thank God, still looking ruffled but also _present_ in a way he wasn’t before, a light in his eyes that was absent before now. “Your mother’s on her way,” he assures me. “Seawoll had already arranged for her to get a ride here, once Tyburn--I mean, once we were assured that…”

“That I wasn’t a double agent?” I joke, offering him a little smile, a way to bridge the awkwardness, turn the conversation away from what would’ve happened had those suspicions turned out to be correct, what Nightingale would’ve had to _do_ …

Better not to think about that. Better to think about my mum, about Beverley, once I see them again.

“Beverley’s been told, right?” I say suddenly, anxious, and Nightingale gives me a quick smile. 

“Tyburn assured me she would handle that--insisted on it, in fact. Under the circumstances, I felt it best to concede.”

There’s something about that that pings as wrong in my head, but Nightingale’s hovering there awkwardly, and it’s on the tip of my tongue to offer him a chair, but for some reason that I can’t fully explain, I shift over on on the bed, making room for him to sit on the edge of it next to me. 

Nightingale immediately take the silent offer, carefully placing his cane to one side as he sits next to me, looking me over once more, but with a concerned, anxious air this time. “Are you hungry?” he asks me. “You’ll be released soon, I’m told, but I’m sure we could find you something.”

“No, I’m all right,” I assure him. “Besides, I’m kind of waiting for something more decent than hospital food.”

Nightingale smiles at this and says, “If your first meal isn’t something cooked by either Molly or your mother, I fear there will be open revolt.”

I laugh at the idea of my mum and Molly teaming up, then go quiet as I realize that might actually have happened already. I look back over at Nightingale, who’s still watching me with that awed, disbelieving look. A shiver goes down my spine, and I blurt out, “Everyone’s all right, aren’t they? Zach told me that everyone was okay, but--”

Nightingale’s face softens. “Everyone’s all right, Peter,” he promises. “Abigail and Sahra are apprentices now--” my eyes grow huge at Sahra’s name being mentioned, nine million additional questions jumping to the forefront of my brain, but Nightingale’s continuing, saying now, “Your mother’s been brought on as administrative support for the Folly, and Beverley--” I know I’m not imagining the faint pause in his voice before he says, “Beverley’s fine. She’s been very helpful to us over the past year as well, even if…” 

He trails off again, and I press him, a cold spike of worry in my head as I ask, “But she’s okay?”

“She’s fine, Peter,” Nightingale tells me. “It’s only that she’s missed you very badly. We all have.”

“Oh,” I say softly, staring down at my hands. “Does it help if I say that I missed all of you too?”

“It does, actually,” Nightingale says, his voice thoughtful. When I look up, he’s biting at his lip again, but in a more abstracted way this time. Clearly hesitant, he asks, “Your time away, was it…”

I try, but a shudder goes through me. It had been easier to keep the horror of it away while being questioned by Finula and Arthur, they hadn’t really understood what it meant, me being trapped in that ghostly version of London, but Nightingale...Nightingale will understand all of it. “It wasn’t exactly a holiday.”

“The scar on your chest,” Nightingale murmurs gently, and I don’t flinch, but it’s a near thing. 

“Turns out our old friend Mr. Punch comes from the “eye for an eye” school of revenge,” I tell him, trying to keep my voice light. 

Nightingale’s jaw tightens. “So that was--” He stops, and explains in a tight voice, “After the warehouse exploded, but before we could think of going in, there was a scream--” His voice cracks at the memory, and he pauses before continuing on. “I’m told nearly everyone connected to the demi-monde in London heard it, no matter their location.” 

“Yeah,” I breathe out, my voice nearly a whisper. “Yeah, that was me.” I glance down to find my right hand trembling where it’s resting on my knee, I squeeze it into a fist to stop it from shaking. 

Next to me I can hear Nightingale exhale softly, and then he’s reaching out and holding my bare wrist in a reassuring grip, his hand warm and strong on my skin. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t tell me that I’ll be fine and that I’ll get over it, that the memory of that spear plunging into my chest will fade away like mist. Nightingale’s a truthful man, after all--he wouldn’t lie to me like that. 

But he doesn’t let go of me, and his steady grip is the most reassuring thing I have felt all day.

“It was Tyburn that helped me out,” I tell him eventually, looking over at him. “The old Tyburn--Sir William. He was there, he pulled the spear out of my chest, helped me off the bridge. Then we hunted Punch together.”

“And did you get him?” Nightingale asks me.

“Yeah,” I say, and I can’t hide the satisfaction in my voice at that. It’s not something I take pride in, mind--but I’m not hiding it either. “Yeah, we got him.”

“Good,” Nightingale says, his voice darker now, almost savage. 

I look at him and pick one of the many questions circling around in my head. “Did you know? That I was...that I was out there, that I’d be coming back. Zach said that there were signs, like the starlings.”

Nightingale closes his eyes briefly. “No. I...there were some incidents, some possible signs, but I couldn’t, we couldn’t let ourselves hope for anything.”

“That way lies madness?” I ask, trying so hard to keep my voice light.

“You have no idea,” Nightingale says, very quietly. His thumb is rubbing circles into the delicate bones at my wrist, almost absently, like he’s not aware he’s doing it. “Those damned birds, Christ help me.”

It’s the outrage in his voice that has me snickering, a little hysterically it’s true, but still laughing under my breath. Nightingale stares at me, shocked for a moment before his face breaks out into that joyous grin that makes him look decades younger, and he laughs with me until the sound of it fills up the entire room.

We’re still laughing when the door opens, and I look up and away from Nightingale to see my mum, it’s my mum standing in the doorway, Seawoll and a couple of other officers behind her, all of them staring at me like they’ve just seen a ghost.

Nightingale lets go of my wrist, and we both quickly get to our feet. “Mum,” I say, already reaching out for her, not caring about anything else in the room, not when my mum’s staring at me like that, her eyes filling up with tears, mouth trembling.

God, she’s--she’s so _thin_. Don’t get me wrong, my mum’s always tended towards the slender side, I get my skinniness from both parents, but she looks to have lost at least a stone in the past year. As I gape at her, she takes a shuddering gasp, and suddenly she’s coming towards me and pulling me into a bruising embrace, burying her face in my shoulder as she starts to sob. 

Oh God, oh God. It’s instinct for me to curl around her, my arms circling her back as I duck my head, tears blurring my vision. My mum smells exactly the same as she always has, and she’s crying so hard now that my hospital gown’s getting soaked through, and I could not give one single fuck, because my mum’s here, and the little boy inside of me’s so damn relieved that I could collapse from it, if I let myself.

“It’s really you,” she’s saying into my shoulder in Krio, over and over again, “My God, it really is you.”

“Shh, it’s all right,” I promise her, my voice cracking, throat aching as I say it. “It’s all right, I’m all right, it’s okay.”

“Do you promise?” she asks me wetly, finally pulling away just far enough to stare up into my face anxiously, disbelief and joy warring in her eyes. 

“Yeah,” I whisper, nodding. “Yeah, I promise--doctors cleared me and everything.”

Her mouth trembles at this, and she reaches out to stroke my face, her hand warm against my cheek. “Look at you,” she says softly. “Oh my God, I can’t believe it, just look at you.” She starts to wipe at the tears on my cheeks, her touch tender and firm, and I close my eyes, overwhelmed. 

It’s really all right. I’m home again. 

“It’s true then?” my mum asks, and my eyes open, but she’s not talking to me, she’s looking over my shoulder at Nightingale. “He’s really all right, Thomas?”

“Sound as a bell, Rose, I assure you,” Nightingale tells her, his voice sounding choked too. 

My mum turns her attention to me, cupping my face for one moment before she says, firmly, “Okay. Then we’re taking you home now.”

I take in a shuddering breath of air, letting it fill my lungs before I reply. “Yeah,” I say, wiping at my face with my free hand, knuckling away the last of my tears. “Yeah, that sounds...it sounds really good.”


	2. Chapter Two

Even with my mum declaring that we were all going home, I don’t let myself believe it’s really that simple--except somehow, incredibly, it _is_. 

I’m given a spare set of scrubs--the top is bright green, while the trousers are blue, and trainers in my size. No one thought of socks, though. I hope the shoes are new, I think to myself, and jam my feet into them before I can think twice. When I step out into the doorway, I see my mum talking quietly with Seawoll, and have to blink in confusion at the sight. They catch sight of me and God, the smile on my mum's face when she sees me again--for that one second, she looks exactly the same as the faded photographs I've seen of her as a teenager in Sierra Leone. 

Seawoll approaches me, looking me over as he does. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he mutters, very obviously astounded. “Even by your unit’s standards this is just...fucking insanity.” 

“You’re telling me,” I say, and Seawoll actually half-smiles at that. Will wonders never cease. 

“Well,” he says, and then offers me his hand. “Welcome home, son.”

“Thank you,” I say, only a little awkwardly, and we shake hands. 

My mum comes to stand at my side, threading her arm through mine as she tells Seawoll, “We’ll want to give Peter time before he returns to the Met, of course.”

Seawoll gives my mother an amused look, and I have to fight back the sense of disorientation at the idea of Inspector Seawoll knowing my mother well enough to know how she can get. “I think we can arrange some leave before we throw him right back into the thick of things,” he says, dryly, and adds, “It’ll take that long anyway for the HR department to wrap their heads around this--I don’t envy the person trying to work out if we should be giving you back pay or not.”

“Oh God,” I say, while my mum interjects, “Don’t be ridiculous, of course they should.”

"Mum," I protest, but Seawoll just laughs and says, "Point your mother the way of your union rep, should they give you any guff."

"See?" my mum says, smugly, and I give in for the moment. 

As Nightingale approaches, having somehow finangled my discharge when I wasn't looking, Seawoll shakes my hand once more. "I'll be stopping by your nick soon enough, but take care of yourself, eh?"

This friendlier version of Seawoll is, I suppose, to be expected under these circumstances, but it's still a shock all the same. "I will," I tell him, trying not to stumble over my words or worse, ask what he means by _stopping by_. In all my time at the Folly I'd never seen another inspector willingly come by, or really come by at all, and now--

But that's the point, I suppose. A year's gone by, and with Sahra as an apprentice--

But _that_ thought has my brain spinning off again, and it takes Nightingale two tries before he can grab my attention once more, as we're all walking together to the car. 

"Peter?"

"Sorry," I say quickly, shaking my head. "Sorry, just--lost in thought for a moment. I've never seen Seawoll be that friendly before."

Nightingale glances over at Mum, and then says, "Well, I think it's safe to say that certain...stances have been reconsidered, in your absence."

Absence, I think. What a tactful way to put it.

*

Seeing the old Jag again is a shock. Not because it’s changed, but because it looks exactly the same as ever, perhaps a new ding or two, but still gorgeous. Nightingale takes the driver's seat, of course, and I settle with my mum in the backseat. 

"We'll get you properly fed once we're back home," she declares firmly, her voice rather matter-of-fact, but she's still holding my hand in between her own, her grip firm and her skin cool. "You're too skinny."

I make it a point to never contradict my mother openly, but I can't let this pass. "Me? What about you, look at how much weight you've lost."

Mum’s face goes blank for a second, then she waves it off. "Eh. Diet."

"Diet," I repeat slowly, disbelieving. 

"What, am I not allowed to get healthy?" Mum demands. "Besides, I think it looks rather good on me."

And truthfully, she doesn't _look_ ill. But it's still jarring all the same to look at her, to see the new sharpness to her cheekbones, her bone structure, to look at her and think, _There's less of her here than there should be_. 

"As long as you're all right," I say, and out of the corner of my eye, I can see Nightingale watching us through the rearview mirror. 

Mum pats my hand, and says, "Peter, don't worry, I'm fine. And after all, I'm not the one who came back from--" she stops, and says firmly, changing back to the original subject, "We need to get you fed."

"No arguing with that," I promise her. Truthfully, being hungry again is a strange, strange sensation--I haven't actually _needed_ to eat, not in a while. I remember going out drinking with Sir William, in Ye Olde Alehouses of Yore, I dimly remember getting drunk and singing old Sugababes songs to keep him entertained, but it wasn't...it wasn't true hunger, wasn't true intoxication. 

_"That's how it works here, I'm afraid_ , William had confessed once, in one of his more introspective moods. _"You can't really...feel anything the same way you did when you were alive."_

"It'll be good to get some proper cooking again," is all I say, but Mum smiles at that, pleased, reaching out to touch my cheek. With that gentle touch, it hits me all over again--I'm home and I'm safe and my mum's here, my family's here--

I duck my head so she can't see me tear up, but I know she's not fooled. Blinking rapidly, I turn my head away as I clear my throat, staring out at the streets of London, filled with cars and people, and for one second, I’m filled with such an intense feeling of disorientation that it leaves me dizzy.

“Peter?” my mum presses, squeezing my hand. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I say, mouth dry, and I wonder how long I’ll have to wait until that’s really true.

*

It's the sight of the Folly that has my eyes stinging again. I can feel my breath coming a little faster as I slowly get out of the Jag, looking around at the sight of the coach house, the back of the Folly, like it's the first time I've seen it before. 

Oh God, I'm back. 

I only take it in for a second before the back door is flung open, and it's Abigail and Sahra in the doorway, Molly lurking behind them, and there's a moment of shocked silence before Abigail bursts out, _"Peter,"_ and she's rushing forward to pull me into a hug, her arms tight around my back, face buried in my borrowed shirt. 

"Hey," I say, feeling my face hurt from how hard I'm grinning. "Look at you."

"Me?" Abigail scoffs, pulling back to stare up at me. It's an incredible relief, seeing her now-- she looks exactly the same as she always has, the dark cloud of hair pulled back from her face, jeans and an Ariana Grande t-shirt on. "Look at _you_ \-- Twitter's been buzzing all day about your return, I can't believe it, I can't believe you're _here_ \--"

"I am," I say, promising her. "I really am."

Sahra comes up to me, wearing the broadest smile I've ever seen on her face before. She also looks much the same as always, dark blue hijab, professional attire, Muslim ninja and police officer on the rise. And now, apparently, apprentice of the Folly. "Peter," she breathes out, looking me over with disbelieving eyes. "This is--"

"Incredible," I say. God, my face might get stuck like this, the rate I’m going. “Or fucking insanity, if you hear Seawoll talk about it.”

Sahra laughs, sounding as giddy as I feel. “How about both? Let’s go with both.” She pulls me in for a hug, squeezing my arm as she lets me go.

I look at her, how easily she seems to fit here, and the words come up as if I’ve conjured them out of thin air. “I know I’m a bit late, but--welcome to the Folly.”

Sahra looks briefly startled at this, but a loud bark draws both our attention back to the door, where Toby’s wriggling out of Molly’s arms to bound over, jumping around my feet as he yaps joyfully, tail wagging until I pick him up, and once he’s in my arms, he makes a point of sniffing me before licking my face. 

Despite having dog slobber on my face, I scratch him behind the ears, smiling as Toby makes happy noises of contentment. When I look up, Molly’s appeared right in front of me, face very solemn, but her eyes a little wider than normal, looking me over as if she’s going to be tested on every aspect of my appearance. 

I swallow. “Hello, Molly.” 

Everyone around us has gone very quiet, even Toby’s gone still in my arms, and Molly slowly steps forward until she’s right in my personal space, very carefully taking Toby out of my arms and gently placing him on the ground, before she starts to brush the dog hair away from my shirt, readjusting the sleeves as carefully as though this is one of Nightingale’s expensive suits, and not a borrowed scrubs shirt from the hospital.

The care in it has me swallowing before I speak. “It’s good to see you too, Molly.”

Molly’s gaze jumps up to my face, eyes shining as she gives me a slow, delighted smile, sharp teeth flashing white in her face. 

It’s funny, how that sight’s so reassuring to me now. 

Nightingale comes up to us then, and he’s not grinning from ear to ear the way that I am, but his face is still alight as he says, “Come on, Peter. Let’s get you something to eat.”

Molly jumps a little at the mention of food, and whisks herself off before any of us manage to make it inside, everyone chattering around me, pressing me for details (Sahra), poking me in the arm (Abigail), or declaring that we’ll have to call up all the relatives (my mother). Even Toby’s barking at my feet. 

Nightingale’s the only one who doesn’t say a word, but I can sense his presence behind me, reassuring and steady, as I step back into the Folly, as I step back into my home.

*

Given the short notice, the spread that Molly puts out for lunch is nothing short of incredible. It’s mostly West African fare, and from the smell and look of it, she’s working off my mother’s recipes. Once I sit down, though, all I can do is just...stare. 

"Peter?" Abigail prods me, gently, and I snap out of it. 

"Sorry," I say, still distracted by the smell. God. Has food always smelled that good, or is it just because I've been gone so long. "I just...haven't eaten in a while."

I glance up once I realize what I've admitted, and Abigail's eyes are round in her face, but Sahra says briskly, "Then there's no time to start like the present, then. Dig in."

And I do, tentatively at first, but god, when that first mouthful of groundnut stew hits my tongue--my manners go the way of the dodo bird, unfortunately, and I practically _inhale_ my food, shoveling it into my mouth while Nightingale quietly breaks down what happened at the hospital, the tests that were run, Tyburn finally confirming that I was indeed the original article, no ghosts lurking in my head, and that best of all, my ability to practice magic so far seemed to be unharmed. 

As I start to slow down, my stomach aching a little with how quickly I've eaten, Abigail's the one to finally burst out, "But--I don't understand, what _happened_? How are you even here?"

Nightingale can't answer that, of course, so I clear my throat. "I didn't actually die in the warehouse explosion."

"Well, obviously," Abigail says, gesturing at me. "You went off to like...an alternate universe or something, okay, but how'd you get back? And did you send the starlings, like people thought?"

"Very unsubtle of you, by the way," Sahra jokes, helping to cover up the sudden unease at the table. I can still see it though, in the way my mum has gone quiet, in the tension around Nightingale's mouth. 

"I don't...remember sending them," I say slowly. "That doesn't count for much, though, my memories are...I've got some gaps, to put it mildly. But to cut a long story short, I was trapped over there with Tyburn--Sir William Tyburn, and we hunted Punch together. It took us a long time to beat him, but we finally did. But once we had beaten him, once he was dead--as much as someone like him _can_ die--I still needed to remember to come home. I tried and I tried, but..."

But it had slipped through my hands like water; the more I struggled, the harder it came, until Nightingale's face was a pale blur in my mind, until I couldn't remember the sound of Beverley's voice. 

And then, finally, William had intervened. "You're not free to stay," he'd told me, his normally lighthearted face solemn. "You've made your oaths, Peter Grant. It's time for you to remember them."

And I had. At long last, I finally had. 

"You recited your oath, didn't you," Nightingale asked me, and I blink in surprise. 

"How did you..."

Nightingale's not quite looking at me, he's sitting back in his own seat, his meal mostly untouched. His voice is hesitant, almost jerky as he admits, "For the last week, I've...I've been having dreams of the day we swore you in, at the Commissioner's office six years ago, do you remember? For the last week running, I've had your voice in my head--"

_I, Peter Grant of Kentish Town--_

Abigail's voice cuts through the memory, as she demands of Nightingale, "Well, why didn't you tell us? For days now we've been watching those birds flying over the Thames, everyone whispering about what it could mean, and you _knew_ \--"

"Because I didn't know," Nightingale says, sharply. "And I was hardly about to get anyone's hopes up over--"

'It's all right," I say quickly, cutting everyone off. "Where I was...you couldn't have brought me back from there, even if you had known." No one looks entirely reassured at this, and Nightingale in particular has a look on his face like he damn well _should_ have been able to bring me back. I take a breath, and admit the sneaking suspicion that's been lingering in the back of my head since Zach showed me that video on his phone. "I think the signs--the birds, Nightingale's dreams--I think those were from Sir William. I think it was him trying to be...kind."

"Kind?" Mum repeats, her voice sharp with disbelief, as Nightingale's mouth thins into an angry line in his face. "Kind would have been someone coming to the house and saying in plain language, ‘Stop grieving, your son isn't really dead.’ Not strange birds flying about on the anniversary of your funeral and dreams that no one can interpret correctly, my God. If this is what the _orisha_ think of as kindness then--"

“Mum,” I interject, and my mother blows out an angry breath, but doesn’t go on. Part of me wants to defend William, point out that he had limitations on his own powers, given that he’s basically a ghost, but I can’t do it, not when my mother and everyone else spent a year thinking I was dead. 

So instead of defending William, or trying to explain, I reach out to touch the back of her hand, to hold it in a careful grip as I say, “I really am okay, I promise.”

Mum squeezes my hand back, her eyes going bright and glassy, but all she says is, “Eat your soup.”

I look down at my bowl, which has been scraped clean, but I take a second helping, because my mum told me to. 

“So that was me,” I say, trying to keep my voice brisk, casual. “Now I want to hear what all of you have been up to this year.”

Sahra comes in, to my relief. “What hasn’t happened, that would be a better question.” There’s a self-deprecating twist to her words, as though she knows the biggest shock of all is her presence here at this table--

\--but then I remember Zach calling Beverley terrifying, and before I can stop myself, I ask, “And Beverley’s been coping?”

“Peter, she’s fine, I promise you,” Nightingale says to me. 

“She’s been okay,” Abigail says, after sharing a quick glance with Sahra that I can’t help but notice. “Sad, of course. But--she’s done her best.”

Something occurs to me. “Did I...I missed her graduation, didn’t I.” The sympathetic looks from everyone at the table answer my question, and my stomach sinks. “Fuck.”

“It was really nice,” Abigail offers. “We brought her flowers. And ran interference with Tyburn.”

My ears prick up at this. “Wait, why would you have to--”

“I think,” Nightingale says, delicately, “--that perhaps we should leave some things for Beverley to explain herself.”

I press my lips together, but don’t argue. It’ll be all right, I tell myself. Beverley will be here soon, and I’ve got time to work everything out. I’ve got plenty of time. 

All the same, though, it’s suddenly just...a lot, having everyone surrounding me, everyone watching my reactions, everyone...feeling so damn much, and all of it because of me, directed right at me. The guilt curdles in my stomach at the thought, but all I need is one quiet moment to get my head sorted, and it’ll be fine. 

So I get to my feet, and say to everyone’s startled faces, “Sorry, I just need to use the toilet.” 

It’s good to know my ability to make things more awkward has come through unscathed. 

I do in fact use the toilet on the first floor, but that’s not my real destination. Once I’ve washed my hands and stared at my reflection in the mirror for a bit, I hesitate in the corridor before walking off to my room. My old room.

For a minute there, as my hand rests on the doorknob, I wonder if it’ll be locked--but no, the doorknob turns smoothly, the door opens and I’m inside, looking at a room that has been stripped bare of all my worldly possessions, every piece of furniture now covered in white sheets. 

A tiny part of my brain knows that this is only logical, but the rest of me’s looking about in dismay, seeing the empty bookshelf, stripped of my Pratchett paperbacks, my Latin and Greek dictionaries, the bedside table that doesn’t have the photographs I kept there, of my parents, of me and Bev together at Casterbrook, at the open closet that doesn’t have any of my suits hanging up, just a couple of empty hangers. All of my things are gone, just like I was gone, and I have a sudden vision of Molly carefully packing away my things, draping the furniture in white sheets, and I shiver. 

I mean to leave and go back downstairs, I really do, but instead I find myself sitting on the edge of the bed, until Abigail appears suddenly in the doorway, looking at me anxiously, a crease between her eyebrows. 

“Sorry,” I say to her quickly, wanting to make the worried look on her face go away. “Sorry, I just--I wondered.”

Abigail bites at her lip, but instead of urging me to come downstairs, she quickly steps inside, shutting the door behind her. “I got your books,” she tells me. 

I blink over at her. “What, all of them?”

Abigail nods, nervously. “Your clothes went to charity, I think Beverley might’ve kept a couple of things, but I asked...I asked if I could have the books, and your mum agreed. Nightingale got your notebooks, though, the ones you kept the notes from your experiments in, but the rest of the books went to me.” She pauses, and then blurts out anxiously, “I can give them back.”

The absurdity of the situation suddenly hits me, and I laugh. “You think I can go to the charities and ask for my winter coat back too?” I ask her, and Abigail blinks at me before her mouth twitches. “It’s okay, most of the Pratchett books were on my ereader anyway...oh.” I pause, and then shrug. “I can get a new ereader too if it comes to that. And I...I’m glad you kept the books, that someone kept them.”

“Oh,” Abigail says, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. “Good.”

I watch her face, and say after a minute, “So how is your training going?”

“Good,” Abigail says quickly. “It’s going all right, I mean. Between my studies at uni and the stuff Nightingale’s got me working on, it’s a bit hectic sometimes, but it’s all right.”

“So tell me about it, then.” I gesture at the chair, which is unfortunately still covered in a sheet, and Abigail visibly wavers for a second before smiling and perching on it, sheet and all. 

What follows is Abigail tells me in detail about the pitched battle royale she’d had with her father over her moving into the Folly to start her apprenticeship for real--the original plan had been for her to go to uni, then Hendon, and _then_ officially start working for the Folly, but my disappearance had throw a massive wrench into everything.

“I wanted to drop out, honestly,” Abigail says, shrugging. I try hard not to hide my alarm at that, but I don’t do a good enough job, because Abigail rolls her eyes and says, “Yeah, that was basically the response everyone else had, except with way more yelling in my dad’s case. He didn’t want--” she shuts her mouth, and carries on, “--well, this was the compromise. I get my degree, but I still practice magic with Nightingale in my down time, and once I graduate I’m off to Hendon.”

That’s...a fairly reasonable compromise, all things considered. “And your dad’s all right with it?”

Abigail shrugs again. “He’s dealing. It helps that your mum’s here keeping an eye on me, of course.” What Abigail is very carefully not saying, I’m sure, is that her dad objects strongly to her following in my footsteps when my footsteps took me to being supposedly blown up in a warehouse. 

But that’s a conversation for later. Or maybe never. “Well, I’m glad,” I say instead. “I’m glad everyone found a way to make this work, you…” I trail off, but I get the words out because if anyone should hear them, Abigail should. “You deserve to be here.”

Abigail’s eyes go wide, and her chin wobbles, and the second I see her eyes filling up with tears I think I’ve completely screwed up. “Abigail?” I ask, worried as she fans her face, trying to stop the tears. “Fuck, I’m sorry, did I--”

“No, it’s okay,” Abigail says, but her voice is choked up. “It’s just that I’ve spent this whole year wondering over and over again what you’d think, what you’d say about something--and now you’re here and you’re telling me, it’s just--” She flaps a hand at me, and wipes her other hand over her eyes. 

Shit. My face must be showing my panic, as Abigail pauses to laugh at me, a bit wetly. “I know you’re freaking out, but people are going to be having emotions at you for a while now, Peter, you’re just going to have to deal with it, okay?”

“That seems like a fair trade,” I admit. I wish I could offer her a handkerchief or something, but I’ve never carried those around with me, and it’s not as if I have pockets to shove them into at the moment anyway. 

“Ugh,” Abigail says, scrubbing her hands on her jeans. “Anyway, I was thinking we need to get you caught up on what you’ve missed, all the news and pop culture and all that.” Her face breaks out into a grin as she adds, “We can even make it a Powerpoint.”

At my baffled expression, Abigail waves a hand and explains, “Sorry, running joke. Nightingale had to give a presentation to some bigwigs from the Met and the Home Office, and Seawoll and Sahra browbeat him into making it a PowerPoint presentation.”

My mind fills with a dozen questions, and I breathe out in shock, “How?”

Abigail just laughs. “It was really easy, since they got your mum on their side first.”

*

We don’t stay long in the room after that, and when I come downstairs it’s to my mum in one of the studies, calling up every relative I’ve got in the UK--which isn’t as many as I’ve got back in Sierra Leone but is still a _lot_. 

“Peter, come here,” she says, waving a hand over at me, and I obediently go over to sit next to her on the couch. “Talk to your Aunty Doris before she starts trying to have me sectioned.”

I take the phone, and tentatively say into the line, “Hello? Aunty Doris, it’s--” I can’t get anything else out because my aunt Doris is screaming at the other end, loudly enough that I have to pull the phone away from my ear or risk bursting an eardrum. 

The next twenty minutes consist of me talking to my aunt, my uncle, two of my cousins, a great-aunt that’s not really my great-aunt at all, and all of them veering between shock and delight and a soft of confused outrage that none of this is what a good West African boy would do to his poor mother, and once Aunt Doris gets on me about “--your poor mother’s health,” my mum quickly snatches the phone back, lecturing her in Krio. 

I look at my mother more closely, saying after a moment, “What was that about your health?”

“Nothing,” Mum says, pulling the phone away from her ear; I can still hear my aunt Doris on the other end, indignant. 

“Mum,” I say, my voice tight with newfound panic--all I can do in that second is remember picking up the phone and hearing my mum telling me that my dad was gone, all I can do is look at my mother, thinner now than she was a year ago and think, oh God, please, not her too. “Mum, what is it.”

“Peter, don’t look at me like that--ah, Doris, I’ll call you back,” she snaps into the line, quickly putting it back on the receiver. “Don’t look like that, it’s nothing so bad as all that.”

She takes my hands in hers, I hold them tightly in mine and ask, “So what is it, then?”

Mum takes a deep, aggravated sigh, and says to me, “I had some...minor heart problems, about ten months ago.”

“Okay, define minor for me.” I’m not letting up, and the second I see my mother visibly pause before answering, I know minor’s got nothing to do with it. 

My mother purses her lips, and finally says, “I had a heart attack. Spent a few days in hospital, got on medication, a new diet, and now I am _fine_.” Her mouth thins at the look on my face, and she repeats, “Peter, I am fine, I promise you.”

I stare at her, and blurt out the only thing I can think. “Jesus, I’m so sorry.”

“For--” Mum stops, her eyes narrowing, and she says next, “If you’re sorry, be sorry for this diet they’ve put me on. Not for things you can’t control.”

I try to nod at this, staring down at her hands, before asking again, “And you’re...really all right?”

“Yes,” Mum tells me, and I hear the truth in that, that she believes it and means it. “Last checkup my doctor told me I could live to be a hundred.” She pauses, and says lightly, “Also shuffling papers for your boss is a far easier go than cleaning offices, I must admit.” As I look up at that, she gives me a look and says, “Not that you’re to tell him that. It’ll give him ideas.”

I can fill in the blanks from that--Nightingale must have given her the job soon after her heart attack, some light work to keep her off her feet, keep her occupied. I wasn’t entirely sure how the job had went from that to her being on such easy terms with Inspector Seawoll, but my mum’s always been the managing sort, it’s how she kept my dad living for so long.

“Peter?” Mum prods, and when I look back up at her, her face softens, and she’s pulling me in wordlessly for another hug. 

I hug her back, as hard as I can, and bite my tongue so I don’t blurt out the only thing I can think, which is, _please don’t die on me._

We’re still huddled up together on the couch five minutes later, my mum making me laugh with a story of the first time she’d gotten past Molly to cook in the kitchen and how Molly had ended up following her around like a baffled shadow, when I hear running footsteps approaching, and Abigail comes bursting back in through the door, face lit up with excitement, slightly out of breath. 

“It’s Bev,” she says, and I don’t need to hear anything else.

*

I hear them before I see them, Beverley’s voice, sharp with anxiety and tension, and Nightingale’s voice, saying as I turn the corner, “...really is him, he’s our Peter--”

And then I step through the door into the atrium of the Folly, and standing right there by the front door, clutching at Nightingale’s arm like it’s a lifeline, is Bev. My Bev. 

I can't take my eyes away from her, noting the razor-sharp business suit she's wearing, her dreadlocks pulled away from her face, how wide her eyes are as she's looking at me--and the tight grip she's got on Nightingale's arm, like she's afraid to let go. 

"Bev," I say, gently, slowly. "Bev, it's all right, it's me."

Beverley doesn't burst into tears, and she doesn't rush forward to embrace me, not straight away. She just keeps watching me with her wide, dark eyes, waiting as I slowly approach, everyone watching us in a hushed silence. 

When I'm about halfway there, Beverley finally lets go of Nightingale's arm, approaching me just as slowly as I'm approaching her. I stop still and I wait, and finally I realize how strange this is, having Beverley here in the Folly--having her be able to push back against the Folly's protective wards this long, I'm amazed. 

"Bev," I start, ready to tell her we can take this outside, to the garden or even to the tech cave if she needs it, but Beverley doesn't seem to listen, walking right up to me, her gaze skimming up and down before she slowly, slowly puts her hands on my shoulders, running them down my arms, her fingers trailing across my chest for a moment before she moves upwards, her warm fingers circling my throat in a gentle grip, my pulse hammering at the feel of her touch. 

I swallow, knowing she can see it--knowing she can _feel_ it. Fucking hell. "Bev?"

Beverley inhales sharply at me saying her name once more, and when she finally lifts up her gaze to look me in the eye, I can see how her lips are trembling, I can see the tears shining in her eyes.

No one around us is saying a word. 

Beverley's face starts to crumple the longer she looks at me, and it hurts, oh God, I'm so happy to see her that it's almost unbelievable how much it hurts in this moment, seeing her like this, so wrecked, on the verge of coming apart completely.

"I'm really--" I try again, but I fall silent when she lifts up a finger to press against my mouth, her thumb resting on my lower lip. Fair enough, I'm not even sure what I would say, what I even could say. 

Beverley takes a very deep breath and speaks at last, but it's to the room at large, not to me. "I'm...going to take him with me now, if that's all right. Not far, I promise, but--"

"We'll leave you to it," my mum says, with more delicacy than one would usually expect from her, and she ushers everyone out through one of the side doors, Molly and Abigail turning to look at us over their shoulders as they leave. Nightingale's the last to leave, and he makes a point of gently touching Beverley's shoulder as he goes. 

As soon as they've all gone, Beverley takes my hand in a tight grip and leads me, not to the front door, to my surprise, but up to the staircase, and then up the stairs to the third floor, where she confidently strides forward to pull me into an empty room that, as I look around, isn’t empty at all. 

I gape for a moment at the clothes hanging up in the closet, at the perfectly made bed, at the lotion on the bedside table that I recognize, because it’s a brand that Bev loves and I say, mouth open in shock, “Wait, you _live_ \--”

“Peter,” Beverley says, not loudly but with a force behind it that makes me shut my mouth with an audible click, “Not now, okay? Not--” I turn in time to see her swallow, going quiet as she looks me up and down once more. 

The silence stretches until one of us finally cracks, and of course it’s me. “Bev,” I whisper. “Bev, please--”

And Beverley listens, as she immediately drags me in for a kiss, her mouth hot and demanding against mine. It hits me like an electric shock, having her body against mine, having her kiss me like this, the smell and taste and touch of her completely overwhelming. I groan into her mouth, and then gasp as I feel her hands slip underneath my shirt, her nails scraping against the small of my back. Without thinking I rock forward against her, heat curling up in my stomach, my cock growing harder in my trousers. 

“Wait,” I mumble against her mouth, a flicker of thought coming to my brain. “Wait, hang on, shouldn’t we--” 

I’m not even sure what I’m going to suggest, that we talk, or at least take a moment to pause and get our bearings, but Beverley knows what she wants to have happen here, and when she pulls back, it’s only to look me in the face as she says, “Take your clothes off, Peter.”

I stare back at her for a second before I make myself move, hastily stripping off my shirt, and then kicking off my trousers and boxers. Beverley’s gaze slides down my body, hot enough that I feel scorched. And then she takes a breath, and places her hand over the thick scar on my chest, her fingers warm on my skin as she traces the outline of it, and I can’t stand it any longer, I lean in and kiss her again, desperately, wrapping my arms around her until we finally stumble to the bed, and the second my back hits the mattress Beverley’s straddling my hips, and she pulls back far enough to take my arms and pin them down on either side of me, her grip solid and unyielding.

Fuck, how had I forgotten how strong she was? I wriggle a little bit, not to get free--Christ, that’s the last thing I want--but to just press in closer, urge her on. “You next,” I say, nodding at her suit, which is working for me in ways I hadn’t expected, but I’d still like to see it off her at this particular moment. 

Beverley’s gaze gets a little hotter at this, and she leans in a little closer to whisper, “Don’t you dare move an inch.”

I nod, wide-eyed, and I stay true to my word as Beverley rises and gets off me and the bed, not moving any of my limbs as she briskly strips off her suit jacket, kicking off her heels and her trousers.

It’s only then that I take real notice of the silver chain that Beverley’s been wearing around her neck all this time. It had been long enough that whatever had been hanging at the end of it had been hidden by her suit jacket, but now I can see the glittering object at the end and it’s--

It’s my ring. It’s the engagement ring I’d bought for Beverley, the one I’d planned to propose to her with, the one that I’d left in my sock drawer before I’d gone into the warehouse on that fateful morning and faced down Chorley and Mr. Punch for the last time. 

I’d never gotten to give it to her, and now here we are a year later, and that same ring is hanging around Beverley’s neck. 

Beverley pauses when she sees the look on my face, blinking before she glances down, and then realization washes over her. She finally looks back up at me, squaring her jaw as she says, her voice wavering only a little, “Well, it’s my ring, isn’t it?”

There’s only one possible answer to that. “Yeah,” I say, meaning every word. “It is.”

Beverley’s face goes very still at that, and I have only a second to brace myself before she’s climbing back onto the bed and on top of me, wearing nothing but a lacy black tank-top thing and a scrap of matching black underwear.

The sex itself is rushed, desperate, Beverley pinning my wrists down while she rides me into the mattress, setting up an urgent rhythm that I have to follow. I try to keep quiet, but with the way Beverley’s clenching down on my cock, how tight and wet and hot she feels around me, how good it feels being having her hold me down, tether me to this spot, this moment where I am alive and home and with the woman that I love so, so much--the words keep spilling out of my mouth, and I can’t get them to stop. I just keep groaning, “Oh God, Bev, please, just let me touch you, oh God, please--” 

She won’t, I know that she won’t, and I don’t actually _want_ her to release my wrists, but I can’t stop the words from coming out anyway, because it makes it even hotter, knowing she’ll say no, knowing she’ll refuse, because it’s what we both really want, in the twisty part of our brains that make this something we both get off to. 

And sure enough, Beverley leans in, puts her mouth to my ear as she whispers, “No. No, you’re going to get me off just like this, you’ll do as you’re told, you’ll stay right _here_ \--” Her voice cracks at that last part, a hitch in her breathing as her hips speed up, and I shudder, my body drawn tight, desperate to come. 

“I will,” I promise, gasping as she clenches around my cock, as I finally start to feel her come, “Oh God, I promise I’ll stay, I do, I--”

Beverley groans and pushes herself back up, bracing her weight on her arms to stare down at me, and it’s that bright, dark-eyed gaze that pushes me over the edge, and I jerk my hips up and come inside of her, my mouth open on a silent gasp. 

*

Afterwards, neither one of us is really up for moving. Me, I’m not sure my legs are going to hold me up, and Beverley seems equally disinclined to go anywhere, as she fits herself against my side, an arm and a leg thrown over me to keep me put. Her face is buried in the nape of my neck, her soft breaths tickling my skin. I’ve got my own arms wrapped around her, my thumb running back and forth along the smooth skin of her shoulder, and God, I can’t imagine being anywhere else right now, I really can’t.

A thought occurs to me, and I ask, “Do I smell different to you now?”

“You smell exactly like yourself,” Beverley says, quietly but without any hesitation. “Like your mother’s cooking and sunshine and a wizard’s magic.” She nestles in a little closer and says, “It’s a good smell, I like it.”

I say lightly, “Well, that’s good, because I don’t think it’s something I could change,” but I’m grinning up at the ceiling as I say it. 

I hesitate before my next question, but I have to ask it, I’m dying of curiosity. “Bev, not that this isn’t completely fantastic, but...how on earth are you here right now? In the Folly, I mean.” Beverley goes still next to me, and I say quickly, “I’m just wondering, since the wards are still up, shouldn’t you be having an awful migraine by now?” Beverley had told me that once, that stepping into the Folly resulted in what she described as an almighty pressure inside the head, and that the longer you lingered the worse it got. 

Except that she’s here now, clearly pain-free, and from the clothes in the closet--this isn’t the first time. 

“Nightingale found...a loophole around the rules,” Beverley says slowly. “The wards are still up, but I get to come and go as I please.” I sit up to stare at her, astonished, and Beverley gives me a tight smile. “Just me, of course, no one else.”

“How? How did he--”

Beverley shakes her head. “The details can wait.” When I open my mouth to press further, she gives a faint smile and says, her voice light, “Just think of me as...the patron goddess of the Folly. Nightingale needed help, and so I came.”

I absorb that for a moment, letting my fingers skate down her arm, and then I finally say, “I know you didn’t do it just for me, but thank you.”

Beverley inhales sharply at that, and turns her face into the pillow, but it doesn’t matter, I can see the sheen of tears in her eyes. 

“Hey,” I say gently, curling around her, pressing a kiss into her hair. “Hey, it’s true. I’m so…” I stop and swallow before making myself continue. Beverley’s fairly patient with what she calls my “emotional constipation” but for her, I can say this out loud. “I’m so fucking grateful for you, Bev. I always have been.”

“Yeah,” Beverley says, her voice choked up. “Yeah, me too.” She leans in to kiss me, and in that moment that’s all I need, her arms around my neck, her lips on mine. 

But there’s more I need to say, a final question I need to ask her. So I take a breath and pull back, only far enough that I can look her in the face, that I can gently touch the chain that’s still around her neck. “I never got a chance, before, to ask you if you wanted this ring, if you wanted everything that comes with it.” 

Because it’s not just me, it’s the Folly, it’s the constant compromises we’ll have to make, it’s the potential children we’ll have that she’ll almost certainly outlive...and while we’ve talked about some of the details before, that’s not the same as me asking properly if she wants to take it all on. 

That’s not the same as looking her right in the eye and asking her if she thinks I’m worth it.

Beverley’s eyes are shining as she looks up at me, and I take an unsteady breath and I push on. “But I’m asking you now, do you--”

Beverley cuts me off before I can say the rest. “Yes.”

I start to laugh, from joy and relief, but I still protest, “You didn’t let me finish--”

“It doesn’t matter,” Beverley says, reaching out to pull me in, pressing a kiss to my mouth, my cheek, the bridge of my nose, the corner of my closed eyelid. “I’m saying yes to all of it.”

I’m grinning so hard that my cheeks hurt. “Well,” I say, idiotically but I don’t mind, not when I’m here with Bev, not when she’s actually said yes, not when I’ll soon get the chance to put that ring on her finger myself. “Thank you.”

Beverley lets out a peal of laughter in response. “Yeah,” she says, and her smile is the brightest thing in the room. “You’ve said that already.”

*

When we come back downstairs, it’s with me wearing an old Star Wars shirt of mine that Beverley had tucked away in a drawer--she’d handed it to me with an odd look on her face, and I hadn’t dared to say a word--and Beverley now has her ring on her left hand, rather than wearing it on a chain. 

Nobody says anything to us when we rejoin them in the study--for one thing, my mum’s still on the phone with the relatives and everyone’s watching her with fascination--but Sahra makes a point of waggling her eyebrows at me when my mum’s back is turned. Fair play, as neither one of us has come down in the clothes we went upstairs in. 

And there’s a moment, looking at all of them assembled there--Sahra and Abigail, my mum, Molly and Nightingale, and feeling Beverley’s warm hand in mine--there is a split second when none of it feels real at all. Like I’ve been spinning in circles so long that I can’t even tell when I’ve stopped.

“Peter?” Beverley murmurs in my ear as we settle down on the couch together, worried. 

“I’m all right,” I promise her, kissing her quickly on the cheek. Without thinking, I look over to Nightingale in the nearby armchair. He’s watching us without making it too obvious, looking so solid and dependable and, and _unchanged_ that it is a pure relief, to see him there. 

I look away, before it gets weird, and focus back in on what my mum’s saying, the list she’s making of the things we need to do now that I’ve been resurrected.

It’s a long, long list. But I listen to every word, and keep my hand in Beverley’s, and remind myself to be grateful, to stay calm, because this is good, this is the easy part. I’m home and I’m safe, and nothing else matters besides that.

This feeling of disorientation, it’ll fade. I just need to give it time.

I keep reminding myself of that, throughout the afternoon and the dozens of calls from relatives, from friends and coworkers, from a transatlantic call from Kimberly Reynolds in Virginia that consists of her taking the Lord’s name in vain, a lot, which for Kim is the closest she’ll ever get to swearing. I remind myself of it through dinner, over and over again, when the sight of so many people at the table, of my mother calmly accepting Molly serving her another helping of curry is enough to have my head spinning again. 

It’s not until I’m alone in the bath, having said goodnight to everyone, gone through another round of hugs and tears once more, it’s not until then that I finally let myself fall apart, just a little. 

It’s not even so much of a choice as an unavoidable slide down into mild panic, as I sink down into the hot water and stare blindly at my bare legs underneath the bathwater, feeling myself shake, hearing my own harsh, panicked breathing in my ears--and the worst part is that I can’t even explain why I’m feeling like this, why my chest is so tight, why it feels as though my skin is too tight to contain me. 

This is supposed to be the easy part. I fought my way back, I made it home, I beat Chorley, I beat Mr. Punch, I beat every known law of the universe to come home--

\--and now I’m here, and it’s as if I’m still walking on unsteady ground, with every step I take. 

I close my eyes, and deliberately force myself into taking slow, deep breaths, until my heartbeat slows to a steady rhythm once more. 

It’s fine, it’s all going to be fine. I’m home, I’m alive, I’m safe. Everyone I love is okay. 

This is the easy part. And if I have to keep reminding myself of that until it comes true, then so be it.

*

One thing that hasn’t changed is the pride Molly clearly takes in keeping the Folly in perfect condition. That means that the hinges to every door are properly greased and kept in working order, so that when you open them, there’s barely a whisper of sound as you do. 

And, also unsurprisingly, when Beverley took a room in the Folly for her own use, she took one of the rooms that had a bath attached. 

So when I open the door, towel wrapped around my waist, it barely makes a sound. Which is how I see Nightingale there in his dressing gown and silk pajamas, holding Beverley in a tight hug, her face buried in his shoulder while he soothingly rubs her back. 

It’s honestly a toss-up to which is the bigger shock, seeing Nightingale embrace _anyone_ like that, or seeing him embrace _Beverley_ \--not that it’s wrong, of course not, but it’s so...well, shocking. 

I feel like i’m rooted to the spot, but I must make a movement of some kind, because Nightingale stirs, and then he catches sight of me and pulls back, enough that Beverley pulls out of his arms, furtively wiping at her cheeks before she turns around to look at me. My stomach twists at the sight of it, and I reach out on instinct to touch her before pulling my hand back to my side. 

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Nightingale says quickly, as if to distract from any awkwardness.

Beverley seems to have gotten a hold of herself, as she says in a voice approaching her normal tones, “Thomas was dropping off some extra clothes.”

“Nothing much,” Nightingale says quickly, reaching out for a pile of neatly folded clothing that’s sitting on top of the nearby dresser. “A change of clothes for tomorrow, some sleeping attire for tonight.”

“You brought me your clothing,” I say slowly, recognizing the navy blue pajamas on top. 

“Well, it was either my clothing or Molly’s uniform,” Nightingale says dryly, and I look up from the clothes in his arms to his face, grinning instinctively at the thought, and Nightingale gives me one of his small smiles in return. But then Nightingale’s gaze drops a little lower, to my bare chest, and it’s--

It’s not that Nightingale’s staring, exactly. But he’s not--well, he’s not looking away either. No, his gaze is right on me, flicking downward for just a moment before moving back up to my face, and I can feel my face flushing in response, and hopes everyone will just put it down to the heat from the bath. 

“Well, thanks,” I say quickly, breaking the moment--whatever it is. I step forward, hand firmly gripping my towel so that it doesn’t slide any further down my hips, and Nightingale passes me the clothes, and I look at him, at his familiar, steady face--and for one insane moment, I have the impossible urge to lean forward, and drop my head against his shoulder, in the same place Beverley was resting hers. Just...let myself lean in, borrow some of that strength for just a moment.

It’s been a long, strange day. That’s the only explanation I’ve got. 

I don’t do it, of course I don’t. As odd as this moment might be, that would just take it to..a level I don’t even want to think about, frankly. 

“Of course,” Nightingale says, nodding his head. He turns to Beverley and gives her a soft smile, and I blink at the open affection in it. He and Beverley have always been on good terms, of course, and it makes sense when you think about what they’ve been through together in the past year.

It’s another thing to see it in person, though. “Good night, Beverley,” Nightingale says.

“Night, Thomas,” Beverley says as he turns to the door. He nods at us both as he leaves, shutting the door gently behind him, and when I turn back to Beverley, her eyes seem a little red still, but her gaze is steady and calm once more. 

I still have to ask. “Are you all right?” I ask in a low voice, not hiding my worry as well as I’d like to. 

“Of course I am,” Beverley promises me, stepping forward to wrap her arms around my waist. “It’s just…” she bites at her lip, pausing before she answers. “It’s been a long, hard year. And Thomas--he gets it, he’s he’s been there.”

“I get that,” I say to her, and I do. It’s just...still so hard to shake this unsettled feeling still. 

Beverley gives me a little half-smile, mouth quirked, and then she nods down at the half-forgotten pile of clothing in my hands. “You going to wear that tonight?”

“Why, you think I should?” I ask, teasing. 

Beverley tilts her head, considering it, before she taps the navy blue pajamas on top. “I don’t know--I bet it’ll look good on you.”

*

Before I drift off to sleep, I wonder idly if Bev can also smell Nightingale on the borrowed pajamas I’m wearing, because I can. And that’s how I go to sleep--with Beverley’s warm breath on my skin, and the faint smell of pine and smoke drifting around me.


	3. Chapter Three

I don’t sleep well, my first night back in the Folly. No nightmares, which is a relief, but I’m constantly jerking awake, staring out into the dark room before curling myself back around Beverley’s warm body, forcing my breathing to match hers, until my eyelids grow heavy and I start the cycle all over again. 

I give in a little before six am, sliding out of Beverley’s embrace and out of the warm bed, the hard floor cool under my bare feet as I head to the bath. After taking a piss, I wash my hands in the sink, glancing up at my reflection only to pause at the sight of myself in Nightingale’s pajamas.

They look...surprisingly good on me. A bit old-fashioned, and I’m not planning on going out and buying a pair for every day of the week or anything like that, but—the navy looks decent on me. Hesitantly, I rub at the silk sleeve, testing it, and then I hear Beverley’s voice through the closed door, calling out my name in a voice that’s high from panic.

I immediately rush for the door, saying, “I’m here,” almost before I’ve even got it open. The second I’m back in the bedroom, I see Beverley sitting straight up in the bed, her entire body rigid, staring straight at me with wide, fearful eyes. 

“Are you all right?” I ask, worried. I go to her side of the bed and Beverley immediately reaches for my arm as I do, holding onto me with a grip so strong I can almost feel the bruises forming. “Bev--”

“I just woke up and you were--” Beverley stops, biting at her lip, before she bursts out, “Don’t _do_ that, don’t just disappear like that--”

My stomach drops as I realize what she’s saying. “I’m sorry,” I say, feeling helpless. “I couldn’t sleep, I just went to use the toilet, that’s all.” I rub at her shoulder, her back, trying to ease the tension from her muscles, but it’s no use, as Beverley’s gaze has dropped down to where her hand is still on my forearm, her expression still tense and unhappy.

“It’s not your fault,” she sighs, eventually. “I don’t mean to snap at you, I just--” She swallows. “That’s just how it was, for ages I’d have dreams about you being here, being alive--and then I’d wake up, and it was never true.”

Her face momentarily twists from remembered grief, and she bites her lip once more, reaching out to touch the buttons on my pajamas, tugging lightly at the one closest to my throat. 

“I am sorry,” I say softly after a moment of quiet, leaning in a little closer. “I didn’t think you’d be up, but--I should have thought.”

Beverley pulls a face, but she’s at least looking at me now, instead of keeping her gaze down in an attempt to hide her feelings. “It’s all right, you didn’t do anything wrong.” She pauses, and then adds, “Maybe just...wake me up first, next time?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I can do that.” Anything to keep that look off her face, I think to myself, and when Beverley leans in to hug me tight, I wrap my arms around her and hold on as hard as I can.

*

When Beverley and I come down to the breakfast room, I’m still fidgeting with the white button-down shirt that Nightingale let me borrow--or rather, had me borrow. Beverley’s mood has improved from this morning, as she snickers softly as I pull at the shoulders, which are a little loose on my thinner frame. 

“You look fine, Peter, there’s no need to fuss over it.”

“I’m not,” I insist, but the way I’m tugging at the rolled-up sleeves undercuts that. “It just...feels weird, I guess, wearing his clothes.”

Beverley smoothes down the open collar of the shirt and says, lightly, “Maybe, but they look good on you.”

She threads her fingers through mine, and takes me by the hand into the breakfast dining room, where as it turns out, we’re the last to arrive. 

Despite half-expecting it, it still comes as something of a surprise to see everyone there around the breakfast table--but that’s nowhere near as strange as seeing the looks on their faces when they see _me_ , witnessing that moment when everyone has proof that my return from the dead yesterday wasn’t some mass hallucination after all. My mum’s smiling rather mistily at me, Sahra and Abigail have matching grins on their faces, and Nightingale--

I can feel my face going hot as Nightingale looks at me, his face so open and full of joy, but he doesn’t say anything other than, “You must be hungry.”

“Starving,” I say, grabbing at normalcy with both hands. I quickly take an available seat, and blink at the massive spread laid out on the table—Molly’s always cooked as though she was attempting to feed an army, but this is massive even by her standards.

She also put out the best china. I stare blankly down at the table, and then Abigail points out, “If you don’t eat anything, Molly’s going to sulk for a week.”

That breaks the spell, and I smile and dig in. 

As I’m slathering my toast with butter, Sahra says casually, “Dr. Walid’s already called twice this morning, he wants you to come into the UCH first thing.”

The news is unsurprising, but I still wrinkle my nose. “What, they need another vial of blood?”

“Dr. Walid and Dr. Vaughan have regained access to your medical files, they’re looking to go over them with you,” Sahra says, and I nearly drop my butter knife at that. 

“Regained--how did they lose it in the first place?” I demand.

“Our dear old spook friends,” Sahra says, her voice devoid of any humor. “For lack of a better description, they called ‘dibs’ on any and all medical data that was gathered yesterday. Dr. Walid’s only just gotten copies.”

“So MI-5 has access to all my medical records,” I say. “That’s not at all terrifying.”

“They won’t misuse them,” Nightingale says, and when I give him a skeptical look, he just looks back at me steadily, his mouth firm. 

Beverley’s giving me a look that seems strange at first glance; it takes me a moment to realize that the reason why it looks strange is that it’s a carbon copy of Nightingale’s expression now, that calm, determined look that promises utter and complete destruction for anyone standing in their way. “Thomas is right, they won’t dare,” she says, simply, squeezing my knee beneath the table. “We’ll make sure of that.”

That is...both reassuring and also a little alarming. “Okay,” I say, and accidentally catch Sahra’s eye; Sahra flicks her eyebrows up by just a millimeter, and I silently resolve to get her alone and ask her some very detailed questions about just what kind of alliance Nightingale’s managed to set up with Beverley here. “That’s...good to know.”

Before things can get awkward, my mum comes in, her voice brisk and matter-of-fact. “Good, so I’ll take Peter to UCH today then.”

Both Nightingale and Beverley look up at this, while Abigail and Sahra suddenly find the contents of their plates to be utterly _fascinating_. “I can certainly escort you both there,” Nightingale says quickly. “Or Beverley can.”

My mum just waves this off. “You have a seminar today you can’t miss, and I should know, I’m the one that scheduled it.” From the frown on Nightingale’s face, he absolutely does think he can miss it, but to my surprise, he holds his tongue. “And Beverley still needs to finish her business in Birmingham.”

Beverley’s eyes go wide with alarm, and she says quickly, “But I’m not going back to Birmingham--”

“Who says you need to?” my mum asks, unruffled. “A conference call should do just fine, and you did say negotiations for those books were going well, yes?”

Beverley looks torn, but finally admits, “Yes, but--”

“And Peter’s return can only help with that,” Mum says brightly. “What with the Folly having more wizards again.” 

I’m glancing between the three of them like it’s a tennis match. It’s not so much a running joke as it is a basic fact of life that my mother intimidates everyone, river goddesses and practically immortal wizards included, but the sight of my mother casually bossing both Beverley and Nightingale at the breakfast table is not a sight I ever expected to see. 

“Sahra’s available, I’m sure,” Nightingale tries next, and my mum’s still not having it.

“Sahra has Latin practice, and before you suggest it, Abigail’s got a lecture at nine,” she says, then gives Nightingale a tart look. “Not that I’m in need of Abigail as a bodyguard.”

“Hey,” Abigail protests. “I’d make a great bodyguard.”

“She really would,” I say, and for a moment the tension’s relieved, but my mum, although she’s smiling, is looking at Nightingale and Beverley, and then she finally says what everyone’s been dancing around.

“He’ll need to leave the Folly eventually,” Mum says to them, her voice softer now. “And you can’t go everywhere with him to keep him safe. Better to start as we mean to go on.”

Nightingale’s mouth is a little pinched, and Beverley doesn’t look any better, but neither one of them argue. 

I, of course, have many opinions on this, starting with the fact that if my mum doesn’t need a bodyguard, I _definitely_ don’t, but given what happened the last time I got into trouble on my own, I’m not stupid enough to say that out loud yet. 

Instead I give Beverley a soft smile, holding her hand under the table as I say, “It’ll be fine. Who’s going to try and mess with my mum?”

Beverley takes a breath, then exhales. “No one,” she concedes, her mouth reluctantly tilting upward at the corners.

“Besides,” my mum says, “Peter and I need to go shopping afterwards, and that’s going to take a while.”

Abigail snickers at the look on my face, as childhood memories of trailing my mum through shops for hours on end while she searched for the best deals run through my memory. It had gotten to the point that by the time I was twelve, I’d given my mum carte blanche to buy whatever she wanted for me without complaint, just so long as I didn’t have to go with her, and she had kept that carte blanche right up into my twenties. 

“Oh,” I say. “That’s...nice.”

My mum gives me an unimpressed look at my tone, and Abigail gives up and laughs into her hand. Sahra’s openly grinning next to her, and even Nightingale and Bev are looking ruefully amused. 

But underneath the table, Beverley’s still holding onto my hand with an iron-tight grip.

*

Despite my reassurances to Beverley--and to Nightingale--I still feel a flutter of nerves as we take one of the Asbos out of the garage and into traffic. And not just because my mum’s the one behind the wheel either.

To distract myself from the thought of leaving the Folly’s protections behind, I ask my mum, “Seriously, when did you get your license?”

“After I got hired to work for the Folly,” Mum says, blithely weaving through two lanes of traffic like it’s nothing. “Thomas was very helpful.”

“Yeah, I can tell he taught you to drive,” I say as casually as I can, given my death grip on the car handle. 

“Ah, don’t be rude,” Mum says, lightly slapping me on the shoulder. “I’ve been driving for months now and I only had one accident. Well, two technically, but that was just a scratch, and the other car was fine, really.”

“Mum!”

“What?” my mum asks. “If nothing else, you can just magic the other cars away.”

“That is not even a _little bit_ how it works,” I burst out, right before I catch the twitching of her mouth, and the last five minutes rearrange themselves into something that makes sense. “Ha ha, very funny.”

Mum gives me a wide smile, chuckling as she says, “I’ve seen your boss in action, that is a little bit how it works.”

But my ears have pricked up at that. “You’ve seen Nightingale in action?”

“Oh, you know,” Mum says, vaguely. “I sit in on Abigail and Sahra’s lessons now and then.”

Sounds plausible enough, except that I know what kind of stuff Nightingale would be demonstrating for Sahra and Abigail at this point in their apprenticeship, and moving things the size of actual cars is not it. At least not in the normal scheme of things. 

“How have things been going,” I ask. “Really.”

Mum pauses before answering. “It’s been fine. Harder with you gone, of course.” She looks over at me again, and smiles with satisfaction. “But now you’re here again, so that’s all right.” Her gaze sharpens, as she adds, “Not that you’re ever going to do anything so foolish as that again, you understand.”

I can’t help but smile. I’m here in London, my London, alive and breathing, and getting lectured by my mother once more. “Yes, mum.”

*

All things considered, I perhaps should not be surprised that Dr. Walid greets me with an enthusiastic hug. And it is _very_ enthusiastic, for such a skinny bloke, he’s surprisingly strong. 

“Good to have you back home, lad,” he says as he pulls away, his hands still on my shoulders as he looks me over with a satisfied air. 

“Good to be home,” I say, smiling. 

He ushers me into an examination room, after making sure that my mum’s settled. Surprisingly, my mum doesn’t attempt to come in, waving me off with a smile, her smartphone already in her hand as she settles into a chair.

“I wish I could have made it in for your welcome-home supper,” Dr. Walid says as he shuts the door behind us, “--but I was rather busy defending our territory from those wretched MI-5 come-latelys.”

Dr. Vaughan is in the room as well, clearly waiting for us--she doesn’t go in for a hug, but she does shake my hand and give me a rare smile. “Not to fear, as Dr. Walid scared them off.”

“Good,” I say, firmly. It’s not that I’m paranoid, except that I am a little. “I’m not exactly interested in becoming a lab experiment.”

Dr. Vaughan snorts. “They wouldn’t dare, they’re all too afraid of getting drowned.”

And there it is, my ears pricking up again. “Sorry?”

If I wasn’t already curious before, the look that she and Dr. Walid give each other would do it for sure. “Ah--”

“You know,” I say, cutting her off, but keeping my voice as mild as I can, “--I know I’ve got a lot to catch up on, but it would be really helpful if someone could start telling me what exactly I’ve missed.”

“It’s a long list,” Dr. Walid says, not without sympathy. “And I can’t help but feel it might be best to leave the telling of it up to Thomas. Or Beverley.”

“Maybe,” I agree. “But…” I swallow, remembering the way that Nightingale had leaned on me in a room just like this one less than twenty-four hours ago, remembering how Beverley’s voice had broken in panic as she’d called out for me just this morning. “I’d like an idea of what I’m getting into, before I ask them.”

Dr. Walid doesn’t argue at this, and if I’d needed any confirmation that I should be handling both Nightingale and Beverley with kid gloves, this would do it. “I see,” he says, glancing over at Dr. Vaughan again. “I don’t suppose anyone has told you what happened, once you were...well, taken.”

I shake my head. “I know Beverley can get into the Folly now, and I know my mum’s working for Nightingale as some sort of assistant, and that Sahra and Abigail are apprentices but other than that--”

“So they didn’t tell you about the inquiry then,” Dr. Vaughan says, and I whip my head around to stare at her, so fast that I nearly put a crick in my neck. 

“No,” I say, my stomach sinking. “No, nobody mentioned that.”

Dr. Vaughan lets out an explosive sigh. “No, of course nobody mentioned it, it was only a total disaster that nearly resulted in the Folly being dismantled. Hardly anything, in the grand scheme of things.”

Jesus Christ. “What _happened_ ,” I ask again, impatience and worry thick in my voice. 

Dr. Walid sighs once more. “There was an inquiry, as I’ve said. I can’t speak to all the politics that went into it, just that Inspector Folsom was at the head of it all, and that it was...ugly. Very much so.”

I groan. “With Folsom at the head of it, of course it was,” I say, and then a thought occurs to me. “Was Tyburn behind any of--”

“From what I gathered,” Dr. Walid says, delicately, “--she chose to stay above the fray. It didn’t much matter at that point, your presumed death was...well, it was enough on its own to set the vultures circling, especially when Thomas attempted to bring Abigail in as an apprentice in her own right.”

“Yeah,” is all I say, but I can see it all laid out in front of me, as if I’d actually been there myself to see it happen. Of course, if I had been there, it never would have happened in the first place. 

“But it didn’t work,” I say, grasping at that straw. I look at Dr. Walid and Dr. Vaughan and ask the only question that matters. “How did it not work? Did the Home Office--”

“No,” Dr. Walid says, shaking his head slowly. “No, we have Beverley to thank for that, actually.”

My eyes flick between Dr. Walid and Dr. Vaughan, both of whom are watching me with a carefully blank air. “And how exactly did she manage that?” I ask, keeping my voice as calm as possible.

Dr. Walid is very obviously choosing his words with care. “I can’t give you the particulars, as I wasn’t there for that meeting. What I can tell you is that Beverley was there, along with some very high-ranking people from the Met and the Home Office, and by the end of that meeting, Thomas’ position as head of the Folly was secure, and Abigail was officially his apprentice. And within that same week, Chief Inspector Folsom had resigned from the Met.”

She’s more terrifying than she used to be, Zach had said about Beverley. 

“So Beverley destroyed his career,” I say, blankly. “How did she--why--”

“I don’t know how she did it,” Dr. Walid says quickly. “Frankly, under the circumstances, I was too relieved to ask questions, and Thomas certainly wasn’t volunteering any information. As for _why_ \--Peter, surely you know.”

And I think of Beverley saying yesterday, “Just call me the patron goddess of the Folly,” and I finally realize that I should have taken her _exactly_ at her word. 

I stare down at my hands. “I should probably talk to Beverley and Nightingale about this,” I say after a moment. 

“I think that would be best,” Dr. Walid agrees gently. 

They turn the conversation back to why I’m actually here, and to my newfound status as a medical freak of nature. Dr. Walid attempts to put it more tactfully than that, but that’s basically what it amounts to, given that nothing about my current physical state makes any rational sense whatsoever.

“I just can’t explain it,” Dr. Vaughan tells me, as she shows me another one of the many scans that were made of my chest, in a fruitless attempt to discover any physical traces of the spear that went through my chest. “With a catastrophic injury like this, where we have clear evidence of an entrance and exit wound, you’d expect to see massive injury and damage to the heart, to the lungs--”

I reflexively reach up with my hand towards my chest, to the scar I know is there, remembering the taste of blood in my mouth, the way it bubbled on my lips as I screamed and cried for help. 

“--but there’s nothing there, there’s not even evidence of the ribs being broken, for God’s sake--”

“Oh, they were broken,” I say distantly, remembering the unnatural, terrifying snap of my bones giving way. “Trust me, I remember that.”

I mean for it to come out dry and rueful, but both Dr. Vaughan and Dr. Walid glance over at me quickly, and that’s when I realize I’m twisting my hands in my lap. 

I make myself stop. “I’m fine,” I say to them.

“Peter,” Dr. Walid says, in a voice so gentle that I have to set my teeth, “--how long were you on that bridge? Do you remember?”

I have to take a deep breath before I can answer. “It’s hard to be sure, exactly. Days, at least.” 

“All right,” Dr. Walid says in his soft voice. “Then the good news, which we should all keep in mind, is that there is no physical damage. Your heart is fine, your lungs are fine, you’re in excellent physical shape for someone your age. That’s good news, Peter.”

Yeah. Lucky me.

*

When I finally leave the exam room, I’m not expecting to come out to the sight of my mother sitting next to Tyburn, the two of them cordially talking to each other, with my mum in particular wearing the polite expression she gets in front of company. 

Both of them turn to look at me, Tyburn’s face a calm mask, my mum quickly putting on a smile that doesn’t quite hide the worry in her eyes. “Clean bill of health,” I say to my mum, and as she visibly relaxes, I say to Tyburn, “Hello, Lady Ty.”

A corner of her mouth curves up. “Hello, Peter. I was just congratulating your mother on your return home.”

“Thank you,” I say carefully. 

“We’re all pleased to have Peter back, of course,” Mum says, getting up from her seat to stand next to me, placing a hand on my arm in a way that is both pointed and protective. My gaze is ping-ponging between her and Tyburn, trying to figure out what run-ins they must have had before now, and what must have happened for her to have this sort of wary, but still polite attitude. 

God, it’s going to be ages before I finally manage to catch up on everything I need to.

“I’m sure,” Tyburn says, and reaches inside of her expensive purse, pulling out a small white card. “That’s actually why I stopped by, I’m sure you’ll be running into some bureaucratic difficulties with Peter’s return, and I wanted to offer my assistance.”

I glance over at my mum before I can stop herself, and she’s looking right back at me, her eyebrow momentarily twitching upwards before she turns back to Tyburn, immediately putting a smile on her face. “That’s so kind of you,” she says sweetly, her fingers pressing down into my arm in a silent reminder to me to stay quiet. 

Tyburn holds the card out. “My solicitor’s expecting your call--this would all be pro bono, of course. Just a way of cutting through the red tape--after all, we all want Peter to get back in the swing of things as quickly as possible, don’t we?”

My mother takes the card, but pats my arm as she says, cheerfully, “Oh, of course, but there’s no need for anyone to rush. The Folly’s in good hands, after all, Peter can take his time settling in.”

Tyburn’s lips momentarily thin, but she keeps up the cordiality. “Of course.” She looks straight at me and says, “Give my regards to Beverley, would you, Peter? Tell her that her sister says hello.”

I don’t let myself take a deep breath until Tyburn leaves and turns the corner, the faint click of her heels fading away as she goes. “Okay,” I say quietly, “--what was that?”

“Hush,” Mum says, quickly gathering up her coat and purse. “I’ll tell you about it in the car.”

I hold my tongue until we’re back in the car and heading off to M&S, and then I say, “Okay. What’s happened with Tyburn since I’ve been gone?”

Mum heaves a sigh. “She doesn’t approve of Beverley working so closely with the Folly,” she says, and then snorts. “And that’s putting it mildly.”

“So,” I say, “--there was some flooded homes then?”

“The flooded homes were the _least_ of it,” Mum says. “Ever since Thomas invited Beverley into the Folly, it’s been…” she makes a gesture with her free hand like a bomb going off, or like fireworks exploding in the sky. 

“Why did he do it?” I ask, unable to stop the question from coming out. “ _How_ did he do it?”

Mum frowns at me a little. “He did it because he needed the help, and she needed to do something to help.” 

“I know that,” I say, and I do. “I just don’t understand _how_ \--Mum, those wards at the Folly are serious business, there’s no way Nightingale could’ve taken them down on his own--”

Mum purses her lips. “He didn’t have to. He just--” She stops before saying anything else, and says after a moment, frowning, “You should ask Beverley about it.”

“I have asked,” I say to her, and my mum shrugs. “Then try again.”

I’d try to press for more, even though from the look on my mum’s face, it wouldn’t do any good, but we’ve reached M&S, and I know from long, painful experience that once my mum’s in a shop, absolutely nothing is getting in her way. 

*

By the time we finally get back to the Folly, it's late afternoon, and the back of the Abso is filled to bursting with shopping bags. I'm still a little shell shocked, both by how much clothing we bought--I'm not sure M&S has anything left in stock after my mum was done with the place--and by the final price of our mad spree. Not that my mum, for once, was worried about the cost--she'd just coolly put down a credit card I discovered was for the Folly's "business expenses" account, and had ruthlessly squashed any of my feeble protests in the queue. 

"These are work expenses," she'd just said to me. "If it hadn't been for your job, you wouldn't have been taken away, and I wouldn't have given away all your clothes because I thought you were dead. This is the least of what you're owed." 

There was no arguing with that logic, and I knew that Nightingale, even if he saw the final receipts, wouldn't blink at the cost. So I'd kept quiet, and helped Mum pack the shopping bags into the boot of the car. 

It hadn't been a bad trip on the whole. Slightly surreal sometimes, being out shopping at M&S instead of running through a ghostly version of London, club in one hand and a spear in the other--but it was nice too, in a way, spending the day with my mum, laughing as she tried to coax me into picking brighter colors for my wardrobe because according to her, my addiction to navy blue was just criminal. 

“I can’t be showing up to crime scenes wearing a lime-green suit, Mum--”

My mum had looked around exaggeratedly before demanding, “Where do you see lime-green, eh?” And then she’d shoved a striped lavender button-down shirt at me and told me to try it on in the dressing room. 

I’d also managed to get a basic timeline of the major changes at the Folly--how Abigail had been the first to come in, practically the day after my funeral service--a subject Mum mentioned with a wince that I pretended not to see--and then my mother came in for good, just a couple months later, after her heart attack. Sahra had been the last, and I couldn’t help but notice my mother was a little vague around the details of what had made Sahra finally decide to step in and take the role of apprentice, just that the Met had agreed that it was necessary to have a police officer come in at this stage of affairs, and that Sahra had been willing to do it. 

“Seawoll must have been livid,” I say. 

“Actually, Alex was very helpful in getting it through with the Commissioner,” Mum says brightly. “He might have sulked a little bit at losing Sahra from the Belgravia unit, but he came around quickly enough.”

I look at my mum, but she genuinely doesn’t look or sound like she’s joking. 

"That--I didn't expect to hear that about Seawoll," I say, as diplomatically as I can, while also taking note of how my mum's easily using Seawoll's first name. And not "Alexander", the way that Nightingale does as a way to tweak Seawoll during a meeting, but simply Alex. 

Mum just shrugs. "Things changed after you were gone."

"I didn't think Sahra--" I bite my lip, before choosing my words carefully. "I didn't think she was interested in becoming a wizard. We'd offered it to her before, you know. And the Met was--they'd been pushing Nightingale to take on another apprentice, not just Abigail, but someone older, someone already within the Met--" Someone who already had a relationship with the Folly, who was used to our weird ways, who'd already demonstrated a sensitivity to vestigia--all of which described Sahra perfectly.

I'd asked her, eventually. And Sahra had been very firm in her no, and that had been that--or so I'd believed. 

“She thought it over, and decided she wanted in,” Mum says simply. “She’s quite good, you know, Thomas thinks she’s very promising.”

“Of course she is,” I say, because Sahra being _good _at magic was never the question--the question was whether she wanted to do it in the first place.__

__But that’s not the sort of thing I can really ask my mum._ _

__So we headed home, and once we were wheeling into the Folly’s garage, we noticed a lime-green 1968 MG MGB parked in the drive, which meant that Lady Helena Linden-Limmer--and possibly her daughter Caroline--were visiting._ _

__Mum, to my faint surprise, let out a soft noise of disgust. “Now what is that woman doing here?”_ _

__I blinked, and then I got it--at some point during the last year, my mother must have met Lady Helena face to face, and really that was all that needed to be explained, as Lady Helena was not the sort of posh white woman my mum would take a shine to._ _

__“Maybe she’s just stopping by to say hello,” I offer, and my mum just gives me an unimpressed look._ _

__"Maybe it's just Caroline," I offer next, and my mum huffs._ _

__"It better just be Caroline," she grumbles, parking the car._ _

__Our arms are full of bags as we step into the Folly, where we're immediately greeted by an alarmed-looking Abigail, who confirms the worst when she says, "Lady Helena's here, she says she wanted to see if it was true about Peter coming back."_ _

__"Wonderful," my mother grumbles in Krio. "Where is she?”_ _

__“Sitting to tea with Nightingale, Sahra, and Beverley,” Abigail reports, and then rolls her eyes. “So you can imagine how _that’s_ going.”_ _

__“Yeah, this is going to be fun,” I mutter._ _

__“I can take the bags,” Abigail offers quickly. Mum hands the ones in her hands to Abigail immediately, but I hold back. “There are more in the car, you know,” I say slowly._ _

__“Oh, that’s fine,” Abigail says brightly. “I don’t mind making an extra trip.”_ _

__I look at her, then say in realization, “You’re just trying to avoid the fireworks, aren’t you?”_ _

__To her credit, Abigail doesn’t bother trying to deny it. “Yeah, pretty much,” she confirms, and snatches the bags out of my hands before I can so much as blink._ _

__“Come on,” my mother says as I gape at Abigail’s quickly retreating back. “Let’s get this over with, eh?”_ _

__I sigh, and follow my mum in._ _

__It’s exactly as Abigail reported, with Sahra, Nightingale, Beverley and Lady Helena all sitting round a table, loaded with pastries and tea cups, Sahra wearing a studiously blank expression that tells me exactly how well this meeting’s going._ _

__They all turn to look at me as I enter, and I quickly smile at all of them. “Hello.”_ _

__Sahra grins at me, asking, “How’d the shopping go?”_ _

__“Fine,” I say easily, but my eyes are on Beverley and Nightingale, who are watching me both with such open relief, so obviously glad to see me coming back home safe and unharmed--_ _

__After a fraction’s hesitation, aware that we have company--and I’m not referring to Sahra--I give in to the urge to step forward and brush a kiss against Beverley’s cheek, my hand resting on her arm, and I can feel the tension easing out of her as I do it._ _

__“Hey babes,” Beverley says as I pull back and I smile, but I look up and accidentally catch Nightingale’s gaze as he’s watching us and for one second, even though we’ve never been the touchy-feely type, even though we have company, I have the sudden urge to go over and clap him on the shoulder, reassure him like I just did with Beverley._ _

__Before I can look away, Lady Helena says in a tone of utter delight that is very strange coming from her, “Why, _Peter_.”_ _

__I look at her, a little alarmed, and that only gets worse as she rises up out of her chair, watching me with the sort of sharp examining gaze I’ve seen Postmartin give rare first editions._ _

__“What a magnificent turn of events,” she says, surveying me. “Absolutely incredible. You’ve recovered fully from your time in the other realm, I understand?”_ _

__I glance over to see if anyone else is finding this as off-putting as I do. “Um, yes.”_ _

__“No side effects at all?” Lady Helena presses, her gaze somehow getting even sharper._ _

__“Nope,” I say, inching closer to Beverley. “Clean bill of health all round.”_ _

__Behind Lady Helena’s back, Sahra’s making sympathetic faces at me, and Nightingale looks like he’s a step away from intervening, but then my mother says from the doorway, voice so cool that it could’ve come from a glacier, “Helena, how nice to see you again.”_ _

__Lady Helena slowly turns her head to look at my mum, who in turn is eyeing Lady Helena the same way that she used to look at my old science teacher whenever he dared to hint on his opinions regarding my home life and how they impacted my academic future._ _

__I am suddenly very envious of Abigail and how she managed to scuttle off just now._ _

__“Why, Rose, I didn’t see you there,” Lady Helena says. “I was just stopping by to offer my congratulations to you all on Peter’s...miraculous return.”_ _

__“Mmm,” is all my mum says to that, and her tone along makes it clear how unimpressed she is, never mind the arms folded across her chest. But she catches my eye, and relents just enough to say, “Well, we certainly appreciate the concern, don’t we, Peter?”_ _

__“Yes,” I say hastily at my cue. “Absolutely.”_ _

__And thank God, Nightingale comes in at this point, smoothing everything over with his public school manners, and even if my mum and Lady Helena are still eyeing each other like two tigers trapped in the same small territory, they’ve also just as obviously agreed to a detente for now._ _

__I don’t actually let out a sigh of relief as Nightingale walks Lady Helena out to her car--Lady Helena looking me over one last time as I go, as if I’m a fascinating bacterial culture she’s just dying to get under her microscope--but I do lean against Beverley’s chair. “Well. That was fun.”_ _

__“Let’s never do it again,” Sahra says, finally relaxing in her seat._ _

__“So,” my mum says, “--what did that woman want? Aside from looking my son over like he’s a piece of fruit at the market.”_ _

__Beverley shrugs as I perch on the arm of the chair. “Pretty much what we expected,” she says. “She’s curious about how Peter came back and wanted to get more details. Especially about his injury--rumors of that are everywhere.”_ _

__“Not that we gave her anything,” Sahra reassures me._ _

__“Good,” I say, and Beverley rubs my arm soothingly._ _

__My mum huffs. “I should check with Abdul, make sure she doesn't try to wriggle anything out of him.”_ _

__“I think we’ll be okay,” I say. “What with Dr. Walid understanding basic medical ethics.”_ _

__“That makes at least one of them,” my mum grumbles, and Nightingale comes in for the last part, and can't stop his eyebrows from going up a little._ _

__“Don't worry,” I say cheerfully to him. “My mum’s just allergic to a certain type of posh white person.”_ _

__My mum shrugs, acknowledging the truth of this, and Nightingale's eyebrows twitch up even higher and Bev says, grinning over at him, “Don’t worry, Thomas--you’ve got manners, even if you are posh.”_ _

__“How kind of you to say so,” Nightingale says, but he’s grinning back at us as he says it._ _

__It’s a good moment, everyone there in the Folly together, joking over the same thing. Beverley’s hand is resting on my arm and Nightingale’s smiling at the both of us, Sahra’s sitting back in her seat and offering my mum a teacake. The sun is shining through the window, for fuck’s sake._ _

__I deliberately clench my fist, nails digging into the palm of my hand until it hurts enough to sting._ _

__The image in front of me doesn’t fade, and I let out a slow breath. Beverley looks over at me, a faint crease between her eyebrows, and I smile. “Want to see my new wardrobe?” I ask her quietly, and she nods, but the crease doesn’t quite fade from her eyes._ _

__When we get upstairs, it’s to find Molly and Abigail in Beverley’s room--the room I’m sharing with her now--and Molly is putting away my clothes with a practiced hand while Abigail lounges in a chair by the desk._ _

__They both turn to look at us as we come in, with Abigail saying, “I offered to help but Molly won’t hear of it.”_ _

__“Thanks, Molly,” Beverley says easily, and Molly inclines her head in acknowledgement before lifting her chin ever so slightly in the direction of the stairs._ _

__“Oh, she’s long gone,” Beverley says. “Mama Grant chased her out pretty quick.”_ _

__Molly gets a very pleased look on her face at hearing this--it’s clear that in the last year, Lady Helena’s worn thin Molly’s usual deference for the aristocracy. She briskly turns around and hangs up the last of the shirts, looks at the two of us, and then pointedly over at Abigail, who takes that as the silent cue it is and follows Molly out of the room, tossing out as she leaves, “See you later, then.”_ _

__Beverley carefully shuts the door behind them, and looks me over for a long second before making a casual show of inspecting the closet, her hands running over the shirts, the suit jackets. She grins over her shoulder at me, saying, “Your mum’s got good taste.”_ _

__“Always has,” I admit, sitting back on the bed and watching her comb through my new wardrobe._ _

__“Did she replace any of those geeky t-shirts of yours?” Beverley asks next, still teasing, her voice still light. Easy and casual._ _

__“Funnily enough, my mum didn’t seem to think that Doctor Who and Star Trek t-shirts would be deemed work appropriate by the Met,” I reply. I still know what we have to talk about, but Beverley’s light conversation is doing the trick as intended, I do feel easier, looser._ _

__Beverley makes a show of shrugging, her hand gliding over the shirts one last time before turning to face me. She tilts her head a little, and without thinking, I let myself fall back onto the mattress until I’m lying flat on my back, and Beverley’s coming forward and climbing onto the bed, her legs straddling my waist as she looks down at me, dreadlocks framing her lovely face._ _

__“So what was your day really like?” she asks me, her hands resting lightly at my shoulders._ _

__“Strange,” I tell her. “It was weird, going through London and seeing it with actual people again.”_ _

__Beverley hums under her breath and asks, “Was the city deserted on the other side?”_ _

__“No, it was mostly just filled with ghosts. Simulacra, to be precise. Like trying to have a conversation with video game characters.”_ _

__It has been like living in a video game--or not living, rather. Traveling the same paths, speaking to people with only the same five or ten lines to say, caught on one giant quest, to catch Mr. Punch and hang him by the neck until he was dead._ _

__I yank myself out of those memories and look up at Beverley now, who smiles back at me and reaches out to trace a fingertip along my face, her cool fingers tracing along my cheek, the bridge of my nose._ _

__“I need to talk to you,” I say._ _

__Beverley’s mouth curves, and she says, “Good thing I'm here, then.”_ _

__Almost without thinking, I let my hands rest in the curve of her waist. “Bev, how are you here right now?”_ _

__Bev does me the favor of not pretending like she doesn't understand what I'm talking about. “Because Nightingale needed my help, and because he asked me.”_ _

__“And the wards?” I ask._ _

__“There are ways around them, it turns out.”_ _

__I can't help but look her over at this. “Clearly. How?”_ _

__Beverley takes a deep breath. “So it turns out that you can get past the wards just fine...so long as you're on the Folly’s payroll.”_ _

__I'm completely silent as this sinks in. I know I should say something intelligent but all I can think of is the uproar this would have caused, and that Nightingale and Beverley went ahead and did it _anyway_ \--_ _

__“Oh, fuck me,” I say before I can think, and Beverley goes tense beneath my hands._ _

__“Don't say it like that,” Beverley says, voice quiet._ _

__“I'm not, I'm not,” I say soothingly. “It’s just that I know what this means, that's why I'm asking you.”_ _

__“Yes,” Beverley says, tight-lipped. “It is in fact a big deal for me to take money from the Folly and work with Nightingale like this, but you were dead, so I didn't have much of a choice, did I?”_ _

__“Bev,” I say, as softly as I can. I want to say literally anything else right now--change the subject, apologize for disappearing--but I have to know. “Bev, come on. It’s all right. Just talk to me.”_ _

__Beverley just stares down at me, her face almost rigid, before she exhales slowly and rearranges herself until she’s finally lying down with me on the bed, the two of us curled in close on our sides facing each other, my hands resting on her back. Beverley has one of her hands pressing on my chest, right above where the scar is._ _

__“Everything was a disaster then,” Beverley says at last, her eyes lowered, focusing somewhere in the vicinity of my throat. “Folsom and the DPS were coming after Nightingale, and they couldn’t be called off. I was,” Beverley swallows, “I was still a wreck at the time, but I went to Tyburn and I told her to call Folsom off and she said she couldn’t, that it was bigger than that now.” Beverley’s jaw sets and she looks me square in the face as she finishes, “So I decided to handle it myself.”_ _

__I let my hands run up and down her back, my fingers running along her spine beneath the thin fabric of her blouse. “Dr. Walid mentioned a little of it. That there was an inquiry, a meeting, and that you were there…”_ _

__Beverley lifts her chin, looks at me, and waits._ _

__I can ask her this. If she could do this for me, for Nightingale and the Folly, the very least I can do is ask her directly._ _

__“How did you get rid of Folsom?” I ask._ _

__Beverley smiles, and not in a nice way. “Do you remember when he cornered you at Covent Garden during the riot? How he tried to assault you, the hate speech?”_ _

__Oh, shit. I remembered it in excruciating detail, Folsom caught in the sway of Mr. Punch’s spell over the crowd, saying and doing things he’d have never dreamed of saying without Mr. Punch putting it there--or maybe pushing him to simply say things that were already there in his head, but were simply buried down deeply enough that his self-preservation won out 99% of the time._ _

__It would’ve been impossible to prove, either way. Inspector Neblett had saved me, but that only went so far, he certainly wasn’t going to put himself out there for a lowly PC, particularly when there was enough dodgy magic business happening that nothing would’ve likely come of it. So Folsom had stayed clear of the muck, he hadn’t even been suspended like Seawoll had, and there the matter had lay. Until Beverley dug it all up somehow._ _

__“Did you get Neblett to testify?” I ask her._ _

__Beverley’s smile is still tight around the corners of her mouth as she nods. “And I dug up the CCTV footage from the riot. It had been buried, of course, but not deeply enough. Once I had that, it was fairly easy to get Neblett on board. Faced with that, and with his long track record of opposition to the Folly and to you personally…”_ _

__“You made it look like he had a vendetta,” I say slowly._ _

__Beverley’s gaze is sharp. “I presented evidence, and let everyone draw their own conclusions,” she says to me._ _

__I don’t speak right away, and when I finally do, I keep my voice steady with an effort. “After you got Folsom to resign, what happened next?”_ _

__Beverley’s face softens. “I was in the Jag with Thomas. We were talking it all over, what happened, what would come next...and you know what I kept thinking the whole time?” I shake my head and Beverley looks right at me, and says with an honesty that is devastating, “That it was the best I had felt since the funeral.”_ _

__I take in a sharp breath._ _

__“I’m not saying that to make a point,” Beverley says, her voice hushed. “It’s just the truth, I was...I was a wreck, back then, and I couldn’t talk about it with anyone, not my sisters or my mum or anyone. Except for Thomas.”_ _

__I don’t say anything, and Bev continues, huffing out a little laugh as she admits, “I could talk to him about anything, even call him up at 3 am because I couldn’t sleep and there was a song on the radio that reminded me of you. I could still call him because I knew he wasn’t sleeping either.” She gives a tiny shrug with one shoulder and says, “And then he needed my help, so I helped him. And we were in the car together and he asked me if I wanted to keep going, and I did, and so here we are.”_ _

__Here we are indeed._ _

__I stay there in that moment, the two of us quiet, our bodies tangled together, Beverley pressed right against me, warm and solid and real. “Thank you,” I say at last._ _

__Beverley laughs wetly. “For which part?”_ _

__“All of it,” I say immediately, my eyes shut, holding her as closely as I can. “I’m thanking you for all of it.”_ _

__Beverley takes a deep breath and nestles in closer, tucking her face in the curve of my neck. “Have I mentioned yet,” she says against my skin, her breath hot, “--how glad I am that you’re not really dead?”_ _

__I chuckle. “Yeah, you might’ve mentioned it once or twice.” I take a breath and add, “You should know, Tyburn was at the hospital today. Wanted me to tell you she’d said hello.”_ _

__“Okay,” is all that Beverley says in response to that, and I feel my eyebrows going up._ _

__“Do you want to talk about it?” I offer, tentatively._ _

__“Not even a little bit,” Beverley assures me, and I hold her tighter, even as I let the topic go for now._ _

__“Is it weird for you?” Beverley asks a little later. We’ve been spending the time not talking, trading soft kisses back and forth, until my mouth is tingling and the entire world has shrunk down to this bed, to the feeling of Beverley’s soft mouth on mine, her hands in my hair._ _

__“Is what weird?” I ask._ _

__“Me being here, in the Folly. In your...Batcave or whatever.”_ _

__“Please call it the Batcave in front of Nightingale,” I say immediately, and Beverley laughs. “No, it’ll take some getting used to, but it’s not weird.” I pause, and then add, “You calling Nightingale by his first name, that _is_ a little weird.”_ _

__Beverley snorts and brushes another kiss against my mouth. “You should start calling him Thomas, honestly--he’d like it if you did.”_ _

__I kiss her instead of answering that, although the thought stays in my head, lingering like perfume._ _

__*_ _

__That evening, as it turns out, is movie night. After dinner, we all pile into the tech cave, which has a new, larger couch in dark brown leather, as well as a new armchair and bean bag. I find myself settled in next to Nightingale, Bev on the other side of me, while Molly primly sits in the corner seat, my mum in the armchair with her knitting (she makes a go of getting into the habit of knitting about every year before giving it up) Sahra in the bean bag and Abigail sitting cross-legged on the floor, while we all watch Sense and Sensibility. The Emma Thompson version, that is, which I am assured is the best version._ _

__“There was another one done in 2008 or so, but it was _awful_ ,” Sahra confides to me during the opening scene. _ _

__I’m generally not a fan of period movies, but this one is solid, and everyone else seems to be enjoying it--Molly’s riveted, even my mum and Abigail are watching with every sign of enjoyment. Bev’s gaze is on the screen, but her fingers keep trailing along the back of my hand, along the veins and tendons. Not to start anything, just to reach out. I smile back at her, and she beams at me before settling in at my side, her head resting against my shoulder as I wrap an arm around her._ _

__And to my left is Nightingale, and he’s...well, he’s not paying much attention to the movie. Or maybe he is, but that’s not stopping him from glancing over at me, frequently. He doesn’t make a huge show of it, but it’s as if he can’t help himself, just glancing over from time to time to look at the side of my face._ _

__Finally I lean in a little and whisper, just for the excuse of talking to him, “Didn’t peg you as a Jane Austen fan.”_ _

__Nightingale looks amused. “Didn’t you? What did you think my usual reading habits were, then?”_ _

__I pull a face as I think it over. “Don’t know--solemn biographies of important 20th century political figures?”_ _

__Beverley lifts her head up from my shoulder momentarily to say, “That’s rude.”_ _

__“I’m not taking the piss--” I start to protest, while Nightingale chuckles, but my mum shushes us from her armchair, needles clicking in her hands, and I obediently fall silent, as do Beverley and Nightingale._ _

__It’s not until we get to the end of the movie, with all the main couples happily married and the villain gloomily brooding on his horse, that my mum sets down her knitting with a sigh. “Time for bed, I think.”_ _

__Nightingale glances at me, so quickly that I could almost imagine it, and he says, “I might stay up a bit longer. What do you think, Peter?”_ _

__“I could stand to see another movie,” I say casually._ _

__Beverley stretches out her limbs and agrees, “Yeah, me too.”_ _

__My mum’s eyebrow flicks up momentarily, but she says, “All right.” And after a round of everyone saying goodnight and my mum kissing me on the cheek, everyone else has left, and it’s just me, Nightingale, and Beverley on the couch._ _

__“Anything you have in mind?” I ask, nodding at the dark screen of the TV._ _

__Nightingale shrugs. “Whatever you’d like.”_ _

__“Abigail downloaded the Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice, we could keep with tonight’s theme if you want,” Beverley offers._ _

__“I’m going to ignore the illegal pirating and just run with that,” I say, and Beverley just laughs as I set up the movie on the screen._ _

__“Nice thing is that we’ve all seen this movie before,” Beverley points out, settling herself back against my side. “So if anyone, you know, needed to talk about anything--”_ _

__“That hint was not at all subtle,” Nightingale points out._ _

__Beverley grins. “Wasn’t meant to be,” she informs him cheerfully._ _

__Nightingale just scoffs, but there’s a smile on his face when he does it. The smile only fades when he looks at me, and he asks after a moment, tentatively, “Abdul called earlier, said that you were in excellent health.”_ _

__“Yeah, I’m in great shape for a zombie apparently,” I say flippantly._ _

__Beverley just thumps me on my arm, and Nightingale gives me an unimpressed look. “No, I’m fine, really. Medical marvel and all that.” Nightingale relaxes at that, and I add, more seriously, “Also I ran into Tyburn while I was at UCH, she was talking to Mum. She says hello.”_ _

__“Mm,” Nightingale says. “That’s friendly of her.”_ _

__I give him a look at this, and he just looks back at me steadily before his gaze drops down, to where Bev’s holding my hand in hers, her fingers running along mine, tracing out my fingernails, the tendons and veins in the back of my hand._ _

__"The rest of the day was okay, though," I make myself say, ignoring the way Nightingale's watching me and Bev--and ignoring the way my stomach swoops, not in an unpleasant way, at having him watch us like this. "Mum was on a mission at M &S though, so I hope you're prepared for that bill."_ _

__"I think our budget will somehow cope," Nightingale says, dry and affectionate, but then adds, "And if you need anything else replaced, I hope you won't hesitate."_ _

__"I'm fine, really," I say quickly, and Beverley and Nightingale look at each other over me, and I insist, "I am. Time enough to get that all sorted out, anyway."_ _

__"Yeah, there is, isn't there?" Beverley says, and the soft amazement in her voice is something that makes my skin prickle. Nightingale doesn't say anything else, but he doesn't have to._ _

__The movie itself is fine--again, not my usual taste, but it's worth it for when Mr. Collins shows up and Nightingale starts casually reminiscing about an old scandal from when he was growing up about the village vicar, who apparently had the brains of Mr. Collins, the looks of Mr. Darcy, and the morals of Mr. Wickham. It all sounds very cosy and ridiculous, very St. Mary Mead without the murder, and as far away from anything I've ever known as the moon, but that's all right._ _

__Without meaning to, my eyelids start to grow a little heavy, and I settle into the back of the couch, listening with one ear as on the screen, Elizabeth tells Mr. Collins where he can stuff his proposal and Beverley laughingly teases Nightingale for being, in her words, the nosiest seven-year old imaginable, "no wonder you eventually became a detective"._ _

__“I did play act at being Sherlock Holmes as a child,” I hear Nightingale say, and my eyes fall shut despite my best intentions._ _

__When I finally wake up, I don’t know where I am for a moment, my mind still hazy from sleep. I catch the light from the TV, the volume on low as the screen shows rugby highlights, and I blink as I feel the weight of something against my thigh and warm fabric beneath my cheek, and it takes me a second to realize that Beverley’s curled up on the couch with her head resting on my thigh, and that I’ve, that I’m…_ _

__I’m leaning against Nightingale’s shoulder, my cheek resting against his expensive cotton shirt, and Nightingale’s arm is around my shoulders and the back of my couch, a warm reassuring weight that feels both natural and totally foreign, because he isn’t, we don’t--we just _don’t_. Not normally, anyway._ _

__God, please don't let me have drooled in my sleep._ _

__I quickly rub at my mouth, and the movement causes Bev, who isn't actually asleep, to turn her head to look up at me, murmuring softly, "Peter?"_ _

__Nightingale's looking at me now, I can feel it, and I carefully lift my head up off his shoulder, feeling myself flushing as I do it, heat prickling on my cheeks and the back of my neck._ _

__Nightingale, of course, looks completely relaxed, but he moves his arm back so it's resting completely on the couch instead of my shoulders. "Sorry," I mumble, waving my hand in his general direction. "Didn't mean to, um, flop all over you."_ _

__"Perfectly all right," Nightingale says._ _

__It's not, though, and I know it, despite how relaxed Nightingale looks, despite Beverley blinking up at me like this is all normal, despite the strange part of my brain that just wants to relax into the warmth of the couch and let myself rest--_ _

__"Should get to bed, I think," I say, dropping my gaze, fixing it on Beverley’s dreadlocks instead of looking over at Nightingale--or looking Beverley square in the face. “What do you say, Bev?”_ _

__Beverley pauses before saying, “Yeah, all right.” As she moves gracefully into a sitting position, she adds, “What about you, Thomas?”_ _

__“Oh, I think I’ll stay up a while longer,” Nightingale says casually as I get to my feet._ _

__“Just don’t stay up too late,” Beverley cautions; as she gets up from the couch, she slips her hand into mine. Nightingale looks placid as he sits there, if a little more rumpled than I’m used to seeing him, jacket and vest gone, his shirt a little crumpled from where I was leaning against him._ _

__Maybe that’s what pushes me to say it. “Night, Thomas.”_ _

__Beverley’s hand tightens around mine, and Nightingale’s eyes light up, even if he only says, “Goodnight Peter, Beverley.”_ _

__*_ _

__Me and Beverley don’t say much as we get ready for bed that night. I make the unspoken decision not to wear Nightingale’s pajamas and just strip down to my boxers, and Beverley doesn’t say anything about it one way or the other._ _

__Just like she doesn’t bring up what happened on the couch, or how I’d called Nightingale ‘Thomas’._ _

__To be fair, the last part was her idea. And Beverley has always been good about leaving me space when she thinks I need it._ _

__So she doesn’t say anything, and when I slide in under the covers she wordlessly wraps her arms around me, her head resting on my shoulder._ _

__“No life-affirming sex tonight?” I ask, my voice cracking around a yawn as I say it._ _

__“No, just cuddling, thanks,” Beverley says, sleepily. “Maybe in the morning?”_ _

__“Yeah, all right,” I agree, and I mean to keep to my word, I really do._ _

__But that night I wake up from my first nightmare since I’ve been back, and when I do, my face is wet from tears and sweat, I’m choking on my own sobs and the memory of blood in my mouth. Beverley’s talking to me, telling me to wake up, it’s all right, no one’s going to get me, not again._ _

__It’s not until I hear her that I realize how hard I’m clutching at her, that I’ve been mumbling in desperation, “Don’t let him take me again, God, please--”_ _

__I try to get ahold of myself once I realize, push back the horror that’s still crawling under my skin, pull myself the fuck together, Christ--but when I try to pull away from Beverley, attempting to curl in on myself as I wipe at my face, Beverley won’t let me, she just curves around my body like, like a shield, like she could keep me safe from any danger that would come bursting through the door._ _

__It’s Bev, so of course she could. It’s the danger inside my own head that’s the problem._ _

__And yet Beverley’s hands are warm on my clammy skin, and she’s promising me, her voice low and forceful, “It’s all right, Peter. You’re home, you’re safe, and I will _drown_ anything that tries to come for you.”_ _

__I’m too shaken to try and pretend. “Please,” I mumble, and Beverley wraps me up in her embrace, holding me so close that I can feel the beating of her heart, pounding almost as quickly as mine._ _

__“I promise,” she says, and beneath the terror and shame and exhaustion--I believe her._ _


	4. Chapter Four

Abigail gives me the eye as I knock back half my mug of coffee in one go at the breakfast table that morning. “Late night?”

I hesitate for a second, and Bev gently squeezes my knee underneath the table. “Didn’t sleep well,” I say, and make sure to smile at Molly when she refills my coffee, hovering over my shoulder as she inspects my plate to see how much I’ve eaten--not much, if I’m honest. 

I just don’t have much of an appetite, not that that’ll fly as an excuse when I’ve got Molly and my mum at the breakfast table. And sure enough, my mum starts piling extra sausage on my plate, asking if I need any sleeping aids--

“Guys, I’m fine, really,” I say quickly, smiling at all of them--but I avoid Bev’s eyes as I say it. 

Early that morning, I’d tried to apologize to Bev, only for her to stare at me in bafflement. “Don’t apologize, what are you apologizing for?” 

I was still exhausted and embarrassed, so I’d said, sharper than I meant to, “I had a fucking breakdown in the middle of the night--”

“You’ve been missing for a year,” Beverley had shot back at me. “I spent a year going crazy with grief over losing you, you think I’m going to have an issue with you having a nightmare your first week home?”

It was pretty hard to argue against that. 

And now it’s morning, no nightmares or panic attacks to be found for now, and I smile and ask, “So what’s everyone got planned for today then?”

*

“Peter, what are you doing?”

I jerk my eyes away from the computer screen to see Sahra standing in the doorway to the tech cave, watching me with a raised eyebrow. My expression must’ve given me away--from this angle she can’t see what I’m reading. 

I gesture at the computer. “Trying to catch up on the year of news I missed.”

“Oh, no,” Sahra says with feeling, and I nod emphatically. Bev had tried to warn me before I came up here but...well. Not really much of a way to warn for all this. 

But before I can look back at the front pages of the Guardian, Sahra says with a decisive tone, “All right, come with me, you need a break.”

“I haven’t been up here that long,” I say, but I’m already closing the browser, because honestly, nobody needs to look at Boris Johnson’s face for any longer than they absolutely have to.

“Still you should pace yourself,” Sahra says. “Come on, let’s get some fresh air, I’ll buy you a coffee at the cafe in the square.”

“Big spender,” I joke, but suddenly the idea is really appealing. Go for a walk to the local cafe with Sahra, get some fresh air, be normal. 

“Yeah, I’m making it rain,” Sahra says with a laugh, but her eyes are shrewd as she looks at me. “Come on, then.”

*

It’s actually sunny out, even if the weather is bitterly cold, even by the standards of a early March day in London. We end up snagging a table inside the cafe by the window, and I glance out at the passerby walking past. 

“You’re right, this is much better than trying to catch up on all the news,” I say finally, and Sahra smiles ruefully. 

“Speaking of catching up,” she says, oddly hesitant, “I just texted Jaget and invited him along, if that’s all right.”

“That’s fine with me,” I say, and then pause. “He knows I’m not dead, right? Or a zombie.”

Sahra rolls her eyes. “No, Peter. I just decided to drop it on him unawares and give Jaget a heart attack before he turns forty.”

“All right, all right,” I say. “Just so long as he knows what to expect.”

Our coffee has just arrived by the time I see Jaget making his way through the square. He’s close enough that I can see his face through the window when I lift an arm to wave hello, which means I can see his eyes go wide as his steps falter, just before he starts moving faster. 

“What was that you said about a heart attack?” I mutter out of the corner of my mouth as we get up to say hello and make room as Jaget comes inside, Sahra grabbing a free chair and adding it to our tiny table. 

Once he’s in front of us, Jaget doesn’t actually speak at first, staring at me in total disbelief before uttering a faint, “Jesus Christ.”

“Not him,” I offer with a small smile. “Not a zombie, either.”

Sahra gives me a look, and I shrug. There’s literally no way to make this experience less strange, the least I can do is make stupid jokes to paper over it. Might as well get some practice in. 

Jaget doesn’t notice my excellent sense of humor though, as he’s still understandably stuck on my continued existence. “Jesus,” he repeats again, and pulls me into a hug. 

I pat him on the back, feeling awkward but also touched. “Thanks, mate.”

Over coffee, we tell the story for Jaget again, my miraculous appearance on London Bridge. 

“So the starlings _were_ a sign,” Jaget says, triumphant. “God, Dom and I were going mental over that on Facebook--”

“Dom?”

“Dominic Croft,” Jaget explains. “Nice bloke, met him at--” He stops talking, and the table falls into silence. 

“At my funeral,” I prompt eventually, because someone’s got to say it. 

“Yeah,” Jaget admits, wincing slightly. He pauses and then adds, in a rush, “It was a really nice service, if that helps. Church was packed.”

“Nightingale gave a really nice eulogy,” Sahra offers. 

I try to picture it, just for a moment, a church filled with everyone I know, all of them in mourning colors, and flinch away from the thought, a shiver going down my back. 

“Too weird?” Sahra asks, and I shake my head. 

“Not exactly,” I say, although of course it is, but it’s not _just_ that. “I think...mostly it just feels like spoilers.” To distract from the sympathetic looks both Jaget and Sahra are giving me, I add, “Not that spoilers aren’t a good thing. I spent the morning trying to catch up on all the political news i missed over the year--” Jaget immediately groans and puts a hand over his face, “--yes, that, exactly. What the _hell_?”

“Mate,” Jaget says, “Do yourself a favor and enjoy your ignorance as long as you can.”

“This is what I’m telling him,” Sahra says. “You’ve got plenty of time, just ease into things. Space it out.”

“All right, then,” I say, grinning a little. “What else do I need to know? Any wild cases the Folly’s worked while I was gone?”

But instead of laughing and jumping in with the latest stories of ghosts on the Underground, or what Abigail’s gotten up to as an official apprentice of the Folly, Jaget shoots a quick, alarmed look at Sahra, who gives a slight shake of her head. 

“What--” I start, but Sahra says in a determinedly light tone, “Oh, you know, it’s never a dull day at the Folly.”

I look at the two of them, and then say, “Okay, what if we go back and you tell me what you’re trying to leave out?”

Jaget looks from me to Sahra, and then says in an undertone to her, “Maybe you should--”

But Sahra’s shaking her head again, at both of us this time. She says to me, in a tone that’s kind but still firm, “Like I said--better that you ease your way into things first.”

“Is Nightingale in trouble with the Met?” I press. At Sahra shaking her head, I ask next, “Is Tyburn giving him grief over Bev?”

“No,” Sahra says, then amends, “Not that she wouldn’t try, but Mama Thames won’t let her.”

That’s the sort of thing that requires multiple follow-up questions, except Jaget’s attention has been brought back to me, and he’s watching me talk with a disbelief that makes his next remark not at all surprising. “I still can’t get over you _being_ here.” He turns to Sahra and says, “How are you already used to this?”

“It’s barely been three days, we aren’t used to it,” Sahra points out, and glances down as her phone rings. “Oh, hang on--”

As she gets up to take the call, I tell Jaget, “Think how I feel--I come back and NIghtingale’s hired my mum as a PA, and she’s living at the Folly. She’s even taught Molly how to make groundnut stew.”

Jaget laughs. “Was it as good as your mum’s?”

I look at him and just go for it. “I’m not answering that. I’ve already come back from the dead once, I’m not looking to see if I can manage it _twice_.”

Jaget chokes and laughs on the same breath, and I snort, and the two of us are still giggling a little hysterically when when Sahra gets back from her call. 

She gives us a slightly baffled look, but says, “Sorry, that was Belgravia, there’s a crime scene they want--the Folly to look at.”

For a moment, it feels as though I’ve stepped through to the other side of a fun-house mirror. Because I know what Sahra was originally going to say was that Belgravia’s called _her_ in to look at the crime scene, because she’s the wizard on-call now, and it’s not _bad_ , just...different. 

Sahra must see it too, because she’s got a faint crease between her eyebrows, before she says, “Actually--what if you came with me?”

“Wait, really?” I ask, while Jaget says, “Hang on, is that even allowed?”

“It’s not as though he’s suspended,” Sahra points out. 

“No, everyone just thought he was _dead_ ,” Jaget says, and then turns to me. “Actually, are you still considered legally dead?”

“I think it’s like Schrodinger’s cat at the moment, at least until we get the lawyers involved,” I say, dubiously. 

“We’ll say I’m bringing in an expert if anyone makes a fuss,” Sahra says briskly. “Although I don’t think anyone will, they’ll be too busy staring.” She looks at me and asks, “Will you be okay with that?”

“Yeah,” I say, because even if I know it’ll be awkward as anything, I still want to do something, something familiar, something that I know. 

Jaget throws up a hand in defeat and says, “At least give them some warming before you drop Wizard Jesus on them.”

“Wizard Jesus,” I say. “Really?”

“If the miraculous resurrection fits,” Jaget says, and the worst part is that I can’t even argue with him. 

*

We're back at the Folly, about to get the Ford Abso out of the garage, when I realize I've forgotten something. 

"Shit," I say, stopping dead in my tracks. "I should probably tell Bev where we're going."

I can’t help but think that if Bev nearly had a panic attack over me not being with her when she woke up, and if everyone was so on edge at me even stepping foot outside the Folly, then me going to a crime scene, with Sahra, considering what happened the last time I went off to an active crime scene--

Sahra considers this, and says to me, "We can call her on the way. And things have been quiet lately, it's not as if we have another archvillain running about London to worry over."

I'm not quite sure that reasoning will fly, but Sahra is giving me an expectant look, waiting. 

And I do want things to go back to normal.

"All right," I say, and get into the passenger seat. 

Sahra does call Bev on the way to the crime scene, which is over in Notting Hill. She hands the phone off to me once she’s finished dialling, and when Bev answers, I say, "Hey it's me. Sahra lent me her phone to call you."

"Hey, babes," Bev replies. "You two coming back to the Folly yet?"

"Actually, we're off to Notting Hill."

"Notting Hill?" Bev repeats, confused. "What for?"

I pause, and then jump into it. "There's a crime scene that Sahra's been called in to look at, and I'm tagging along."

There's a longer pause on the other end. When Beverley does speak, her voice is flat, disbelieving. "A crime scene."

"Not an active one," I say hastily. "There's a dead body and some paraphernalia at the scene they want analyzed in case it's our sort of thing, that's all. It's probably nothing."

"Right, it's just a dead body and mysterious artifacts, nothing to worry about at all," Beverley says, deeply sarcastic. 

"Bev," I say, and I hear her blow out a long breath.

"All right," she says, in a tone of forced calm. "I get it, I do, just--please, _please_ be careful."

"I will," I tell her. "Promise.”

Beverley just sighs. "Now put Sahra on the phone."

"Really?" I ask.

"Yes, really," Bev tells me, and from the tone in her voice I know arguing is futile.

Sahra takes it in good grace, at least. I put Bev on speaker and as she lectures Sahra on what is and isn’t allowed to happen today, Sahra agrees to it all with ease, reassuring and calm. 

Once we say our goodbyes and hang up, Sahra says, taking a left turn, "Just for the record, should you die on my watch today, I am definitely following you into the afterlife."

It's a joke, but I still feel the need to say, "Sorry about that, Bev is still--"

"Of course she is," Sahra says, as if it's obvious, and I suppose that it is. "But your mum's right, we can't all treat you with kid gloves, you're going to get enough of that from Bev and Nightingale."

"How have things been since I was gone?" I ask her. "Really."

"It was hard," Sahra says after a moment. "For everyone. So it makes sense that we need time to adjust."

"I get it," I say, and I do, I just--still feel like I'm fumbling in the dark.

But up ahead, I can see the glow of flashing police lights in the road, and the rest of the conversation will have to wait for later.

It takes a minute, when we arrive on the scene, for the PCs and officers to recognize me, but when they do, the sudden hushed silence is almost deafening. 

The skin on the back of my neck prickles, but I ignore it as best as I can, murmuring to Sahra, “I should get used to this.”

“They’ll get over it,” Sahra says firmly, and heads off to the forensics tent to get a noddy suit, and I go and follow her in. 

I go on autopilot getting the suit on over my clothes and shoes, which is a relief. Not that I’m looking forward to viewing a dead body, mind. Just that it’s nice that my body and brain still remember how this part of the job go.

I hear Stephanopoulos’ voice before I see her, crisply asking someone just what the fuss is about, right before she sweeps into the tent and stops dead in her tracks, eyes huge above her face mask.

I don’t wave at her, but the urge is overwhelming, just so I can have something to do with my hands. “Hello.”

Stephanopoulos doesn’t say anything, not at first, and then she says, the sound only a little muffled by her mask, “Jesus Christ.”

I don’t say any of the thousand inappropriate comments that I could say--really, my restraint is incredible--and I look to Sahra for some help here. 

She gives it, thank God, offering up, “I did text you that I was bringing Peter with me, boss.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Stephanopoulos says, but faintly, still not taking her eyes off me. “It’s just--” But whatever it is like, I don’t find out, as she visibly shakes herself out of it, saying in a brisker tone of voice, “When you two are set up, come with me then.”

“Right away, boss,” I say, and tug a bootie over my shoes. 

*

The victim is in the kitchen. White male, mid-twenties at best guess, dark hair that’s shaved close at the sides and long on top. His throat’s been slit nearly from ear to ear, and blood is everywhere--forensics must be having fits trying to keep the crime scene from being contaminated. 

The blood’s pretty distracting, but a closer look tips me off as to why Stephanopoulos called the Folly in for a consult. Sahra squats down to take a closer look, and says slowly, “So do we know why the victim has pointed ears like--”

“Like he’s an extra from Lord of the Rings?” Stephanopoulos finishes. “Was hoping you’d be able to tell us.”

“He’s part of the demi-monde,” I say distantly, looking the corpse over, studying the ragged wound at the throat critically. “Fae, if we’re being specific. But he wasn’t killed with magic.”

“What about the weapon?” Stephanopoulos asks, likely remembering the Gallagher case. 

“Doubt that was magic either, but let me check.” Being as mindful as I can be of where I place my feet, I crouch over the body, leaning in closer to the torn throat, closing my eyes and focusing as best I can.

No, still nothing. I open my eyes as I stand up, saying, "No, the weapon's not magic either. We can do a sweep of the house, if you like."

"Yeah, do that," Stephanopoulos says in an odd tone, watching me closely. Sahra's watching me in the same manner, alert and considering. 

It's while we're going up the stairs that Sahra says, softly so as not to be overheard, "I didn't realize the crime scene would be so...gruesome."

"That's all right," I say, adding without thinking, "It's not like I haven't seen worse this past year."

"Worse than that?"

I stop dead in my tracks as I realize what I've said, as the smell of burning flesh comes back to me, the roar of the crowds at Smithfield, Tyburn trying to get me through the crowd, the two of us always searching for that figure in motley, waiting for that high-pitched cackle--

So many scenes like that, or worse than that, enough to blur together in a horrible kaleidoscope of violence and death, enough that now the sight of one horribly murdered victim with his throat severed practically from ear to ear didn't phase me at all. Instead I'd acted as though I'd been looking at a spreadsheet. 

Fuck. Fuck.

"Peter?" Sahra says, and from the worried note in her voice, not for the first time either. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," I say shortly. "Yeah, I'm all right."

It's a lie, but Sahra does me the favor of not saying so.

*

It's not until we're back inside the car that Sahra apologizes. "I shouldn't have brought you with me, should I?"

I open my mouth to reassure her, but Sahra's watching me from the driver's seat with so much sympathy that the words die off in my mouth. "It's all right, I say finally. "I'd like to be...useful, at least, while I'm stuck playing Schrodinger's Cat."

"Schrodinger's Wizard, surely," Sahra says with a reassuring smile. "But if you want to be useful, you can help me work out my problem with _impello_ \--my apples still move through the air like drunken bumblebees."

"Hey, if they aren't exploding, you're ahead of the curve," I say. 

"That's impossible when you're in the same class as Abigail," Sahra says with a grin, and fair play there. 

I hesitate, and then ask the question that’s been lingering in the back of my head. “You becoming a wizard,” I say slowly, not sure how to word this. “It wasn’t--”

Sahra glances over at me, eyebrow raised. “Are you asking if I did it just because you were gone?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Sahra pauses before answering me, considering. “It was...complicated,” she says finally. “I won’t lie to you, the Met strongly encouraged that I do it, and it was obvious Nightingale needed the support, but also…” She licks her lips nervously, and admits, “You cast a hell of a shadow when you disappeared. I didn’t want Abigail to be carrying the burden of it alone.” 

I don’t say anything at first, and Sahra gives me a crooked smile. “Don’t worry,” she says kindly. “I knew what I was doing, and I don’t regret it.” She shrugs a little, and adds, “And being a wizard means that the next time some racist bastard tries to rip off my hijab, I can use magic on him rather than having to take him down with my fists and baton.”

“Fair enough,” I say. “And...thank you.”

Sahra shrugs a little again, and we both silently agree to leave the conversation there. She does her best to make it easier for me on the drive back to the Folly, keeping the music on the radio turned down low, keeping the conversation light and easy. I do my best to keep up with her, but still, out of the corner of my eye--I'm still waiting to see that flash of motley, I'm still listening for the faint jingle of bells and that high-pitched cackle. 

*

 

The rest of the afternoon is thankfully low-key. I end up sitting in on Sahra's practice with impello, and that's a pleasantly surreal moment, watching Sahra frown in concentration, magic in the air as she carefully lifts an apple and attempts to hold it directly in front of her. She's not at the stage yet where she has a _signare_ of her own, although I can tell that it's Nightingale who's trained her. 

At one point, Sahra gives me a sideways look, and then pushes a basket of apples my way. 

"What, you want a demonstration?"

"Yeah, actually," Sahra says, grinning at me. "Go ahead, show me how it's done."

And that's how I end up juggling apples in the air with magic, while Sahra stands back and folds her arms, saying, "Now this is just showing off right here."

"Hey," I say, grinning, "You asked me to show you how it's done."

"And I'm regretting it more and more with each second," Sahra says dryly, and then turns around to see Nightingale hovering in the doorway--neither of us had heard him, with is par for the course with how quietly he moves about. 

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he says, and I let the apples gently drift down to the table.

Sahra kisses her teeth softly in a show of indignation, and I grin at her. "Wouldn't want the apples to get bruised," I say, and she just rolls her eyes at me.

"Can't have that, obviously," she replies.

Nightingale's watching us both with a faint smile on his face, and he says, "I don't mean to interrupt, but I wondered if I could steal Peter for a bit."

"Of course," I say, getting to my feet. 

"I'll just keep practicing with these, I suppose," Sahra says, tossing an apple up in the air with her hand, and then floating it in front of her at eye-level, like a side-view of a Magritte painting--all she's missing is the bowler hat. 

"Anything going on?" I ask as we leave the lab. 

Nightingale shakes his head. "No, no--it's just that I'm taking Toby for a walk around the square, and I wanted to know if you'd like to come along."

"Oh," I say.

"You needn't--" Nightingale starts quickly, and I say, "No, no, I'd like to."

"Oh," Nightingale says, starting to smile. From this close, I can't help but notice how dark his eyelashes are, against his pale skin and gray eyes. 

"Let me just get my coat," I tell him. "Oh--and tell Bev."

"No need," Nightingale says. "It was her suggestion." I raise my eyebrows, and he adds hastily, "Not that it wasn't a welcome one."

I grin at him, and Nightingale's face lights up in response, which is nice to see. "All right, let me get my coat and we'll be off."

*

"So you think this new case in Notting Hill is in our line, then?" Nightingale asks me, Toby trotting at our heels. 

"It's likely, yeah--the murder wasn't done with magic, but the victim's definitely part-fae, so we'll want to start the investigation there." I pause, and then say with some difficulty, "But I probably shouldn't be part of the investigation."

Nightingale looks at me sharply, and says, "Certainly, if you feel that's best."

"I do," I say, looking away as I jam my hands into the sleeves of my coat. "Probably best from a legal standpoint too, at least until I stop being Schrodinger's cat."

"I beg your pardon, Schrodinger's what?" Nightingale asks, baffled, and so I explain the theory to him, and I'm rewarded with Nightingale blinking at me slowly, before saying in a firm tone, "What an utterly absurd idea."

I have to chuckle. "Yeah, I had a feeling you wouldn't be a fan. You have to admit it fits, though."

"Need I remind you," Nightingale says, still in that firm voice, "That you are neither in a box, nor are you dead."

"Well, if you want to be literal about it," I say, teasing, and Nightingale breaks out into a reluctant smile. We pause as Toby becomes more intimately acquainted with a tree, and I offer up into the silence, "Sahra seems to be coming along well."

"She is," Nightingale confirms. "Quick study when it comes to the Latin as well. Abigail's doing brilliantly, of course, but that was to be expected." He gives me a quick look and adds, "I'm sure it must be an adjustment for you, having them both in the Folly."

"It's an adjustment just _being_ back in the Folly," I tell him. "I won't lie though, it is a little strange having my mum around, bossing you about."

"She's one of the most terrifyingly efficient secretaries I've ever seen," Nightingale confides, and then checks himself. "But no, it's PA now, isn't it?"

"She makes you go to departmental meetings, doesn't she," I say. 

Nightingale grimaces. "And networking events," he says grimly. "If I have to do one more of those icebreaker routines, I swear--"

I laugh at the thought of it, Nightingale forced to stand up in a crowd of polite strangers and come up with three interesting facts about him that don't make him sound like a complete lunatic--

And then a breeze kicks up, cool and bracing against my face, and I jerk back, startled. "Do you smell that?" I blurt out before I can stop myself. 

"Peter?" Nightingale's looking at me, forehead creased with worry, and I can tell he doesn't sense it, that he doesn't smell meadowgrass and blood and clean sweat, and I should play it off, I should ignore it, I should be just _fine_ \--

I shake my head tightly. "Nothing." And it has to be nothing, if Toby’s not barking, if Nightingale can't sense it, if the greatest living wizard in England, likely in Europe can't sense anything out of the ordinary--then it's all in my head. 

"Peter," Nightingale says, his voice low and urgent as he steps closer to me. "Tell me what it is."

I lick at my dry lips and admit, "It's just--I thought that I could sense him again. Tyburn."

Nightingale blinks; whatever he'd been expecting me to say, that clearly isn't it. "Tyburn. The old Tyburn."

"Well, it's not like Lady Ty would be following me around," I say. "But no, it's--" This hurt to say, but I push on, forcing the words out. "I think it's just in my head. Flashbacks. I had--there was a similar moment earlier at the crime scene."

Nightingale's jaw tightens. "You thought you could sense Tyburn there as well?"

"No," I say, looking away. "I just smelled burning flesh. From the pyres at Smithfield."

Now, Nightingale has an excellent poker face, but that doesn't matter when we've worked together for as long as we have, when I know him as well as I do. And from the stillness in his face, his body, I can read the horror he's trying so hard not to show. 

"Punch liked rowdy crowds," I explain, grimly. "And nothing brought out the London crowds like a public execution."

"Peter..." Whatever Nightingale's about to say, he checks himself, biting hard at his lip before saying, "How many were there?"

"I don't know," I tell him, shaking my head. "I remember some of the famous ones, Punch favored those, he always liked a big show, but..." I can't say anything else after that, bile rising up in my throat as I remember the day they carried Anne Askew up in a chair to be burned alive, her body so broken from being tortured on the rack that she couldn't even walk. And in that seething mass of people, Punch had been whispering in my ear.

_How you like that tune, my good friend? That sweet music_ \--while I heard people howling for mercy as the flames rose higher and higher, the crowd jeering and laughing and--

"Peter, Peter," I dimly hear Nightingale saying, his hands gripping my shoulders as Toby unhappily yips at our feet, his tiny paws scrabbling at my leg.

"I'm all right," I say roughly, coming back to myself, the reality of this moment, where I'm on the verge of breaking down in public while my boss watches me do it. I scrub at my face, hating the tears gathered on my eyelashes. "It's fine, I'm fine."

The worry on Nightingale's face only gets worse, and he says, "Peter--absolutely no one is expecting you to come back and immediately be fine."

"I should be," I say, stubbornly, more as a warning to myself than out of any real desire to argue with him. "It's over, Punch is dead, Tyburn's gone and I'm home--I should be fine."

Nightingale hesitates, and then tells me, his hand tightening on my shoulder, and his voice full of compassion, "It doesn't work like that. Believe me, I wish it did."

“Yeah,” I say, breathing in the cool air. “Yeah.”

Toby’s still scrabbling at my leg, and I reach down to pet him, scratching behind his ears as he yaps in approval. “He looks pretty energetic still, we should probably keep walking,” I tell Nightingale without looking up. 

“Of course,” Nightingale agrees, only pausing for a moment. 

We spent the rest of the walk being fairly quiet, aside from Toby, at least until we’re heading back in the direction of the Folly and Nightingale’s phone beeps. Nightingale pulls it out, looks at the screen, and lets out this noise that would absolutely be a groan of dismay if it was from anyone else but him. 

“What is it?” I ask. 

“Another round of meetings have been added to my schedule,” Nightingale explains. “Your mother has it…’synced up’ somehow.” He doesn’t actually use the air-quotes, mind, but I can still absolutely hear them. 

I keep from laughing, just, but my mouth still twitches and Nightingale gives me a suspicious look that shades over into resignation. “As I said, your mother is terrifyingly efficient.”

I give up and start snickering. “I could’ve told you that,” I say, before wincing. To cover it up, I add quickly, “It’s not like you haven’t seen her in action with me before.”

“Yes,” Nightingale agrees, and thankfully he looks amused rather than pained. “But at the time--and to this day--terrifying efficiency is something that we needed.”

There’s an opening there, and after a moment of hesitation, I take it. 

“How has it been at the Folly?” I ask. “Beverley told me about the inquiry, but…”

Nightingale doesn’t reply, not at first. “Difficult. Understandably, the Met took a rather dim view of the event--to lose one talented officer can be considered coincidence, to lose two appeared as gross incompetence.”

The bitterness in his voice pulls me up short, because I know who it’s directed at, and it’s not the Met. “It wasn’t--”

Nightingale waves a hand. “Yes, well--once Beverley routed Folsom and the dust had settled, there was still far too much to be done, and not enough people to manage it all.”

“And then my mum came in.”

Nightingale nods. “She’d already moved into the Folly, doing some light work in the libraries. I’d…” He looks at me, and explains, diffidently, “Perhaps it wasn’t my place, but after her stay in the hospital, I thought some light work for her under Molly’s watchful eye would be a good idea. Thankfully she agreed, and when her health had improved, she rather eagerly began the work of pointing out what I was likely to overlook. Frequently, and with great conviction.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Mum,” I say. 

“It’s a talent that runs in the family,” Nightingale says lightly. “And...one that was sorely missed.”

I look up at that, and Nightingale is watching me with a hesitant look, and in a flash of understanding, I realize he’s waiting to hear what I think of all this, that for the past year he’s been measuring himself against the standard of what I would think, of what I would have done in his position--

It sets off a horrible bruised feeling deep in my chest, the same feeling I get when I catch Beverley looking at me like I might disappear at any moment. And if it was Bev in front of me now, I’d do something to acknowledge it--take her hand, touch her back, wrap my arm around her waist. But it’s Nightingale, and I _can’t_ \--even if, right in this moment, I have to force myself to remember why. 

“You know,” I say, because after years of being around Bev, I had to pick up a few things. “I’m glad she...I’m glad she was there to boss you about, tell you when you’re about to mess it up.” Nightingale’s mouth is already curving up, clearly pleased, and I finish it off by adding, in a tone of nonchalance that belies the way my stomach’s twisting up, “Someone’s got to keep up the family tradition, after all.”

“Yes,” Nightingale says, grinning at me in that way that makes him look at least ten years younger. “I rather thought so myself.”

I smile back before looking back down at Toby, my face feeling hot and prickly, but in a way that’s oddly not unpleasant.

*

Beverley’s pretty quiet at dinner that evening. Nobody really comments on it, but I can see Nightingale watching her when he thinks no one is looking, and I try and just keep an eye on her myself as my mum holds court at the table, talking about Julie the civil servant down at Belgravia who’s very susceptible to bribes, at least bribes that look like pastries and cakes from Molly’s kitchen. 

“So now her daughter’s having a baby shower--” I send up a silent prayer of thanks that my mum’s not giving me and Bev a significant look at the phrase ‘baby shower’, hopefully this reprieve will last for at least six months, maybe longer, “--and she’s hired Molly to make dozens of cupcakes. Peter, I was thinking you would come with me tomorrow morning to drop them off, and then later we can--”

Beverley clears her throat. “Actually, I was hoping I could have Peter for the evening.” As we all look at her, she elaborates, squaring her shoulders as she says, “My mum’s invited us over to her house for an early dinner.”

Silence immediately sets in at the table as everyone pauses to stare. Specifically, they stare at Bev, and then at me. 

“Well...that’ll be nice,” Sahra tries, attempting a reassuring smile. 

“Will it?” Abigail asks skeptically, and lets out a softly indignant “ow!” at what is almost certainly a pinch on the arm from my mum, who’s sitting next to her. 

“No, it’s a fair question,” Beverley admits, with a glance at Nightingale, who hasn’t said anything yet, just looking steadily at the pair of us. “But I think it’ll be fine--if she’d insisted on having Thomas over too, then I’d be more worried.”

“Should I be worried?” I ask, trying to make it sound like a joke and only partly succeeding.

“No, no,” Beverley promises, but undercuts her reassurances with, “If my sisters start anything, we can just leave.”

“That...is not really all that comforting to hear,” I point out. 

Nightingale comes in at this, explaining, “When Beverley accepted the position of consultant to the Folly, the general response from the Rivers ranged from baffled to outraged.” He pauses, and then adds, “Aside from Lady Ty, who was just livid.”

“My mum was the only reason any of them backed off,” Beverley says. “She thought having the Folly stabilized was more important than the optics, and she knew I needed…” Beverley takes a breath, “She knew I needed to be occupied. But now that you’re back…” She lifts a shoulder, but says, “It’s probably just her wanting to check in on us, see how you’re doing.”

“Will she ask you to leave the Folly?” Abigail asks.

“I don’t think so,” Beverley says, but she doesn’t sound totally confident. 

I reach out for her hand, squeezing it as I say, “So we’ll go and see your mum and sisters, and hear what they have to say, it’ll be fine.” I smile, and as Beverley starts to smile back, my brain loses all control over my mouth as I add, “Worst case scenario, it’s not like I don’t have experience handling riots at this point.”

There’s a beat of perfect silence as everyone takes in what I just had the nerve to say out loud, and as I take in the fact that I did actually just say that, fucking _hell_.

Abigail’s the first to break, giggling as she claps a hand over her mouth, and then we all start to break down into laughter, Sahra saying, “Peter, oh my _God_ ,” in between her snorts, and my mum laughing even as she’s shaking her head at her shameless child. 

Grinning myself, I lean into Bev’s side and catch sight of Nightingale chuckling, his face a little flushed as he beams, and in that second--I really can believe that everything is going to absolutely be fine. 

*

“So on a scale of one to ten, how awkward is this lunch going to be at your mum’s place?” I ask, late that evening as we’re about to go to bed. 

Beverley’s still at the dresser, rubbing lotion into her legs. She’s wearing an oversized Fulham FC shirt with the neck cut out so that it slips over one shoulder, and she glances over at me, a smile starting to appear on her face. “Worried about meeting your future in-laws?”

“I mean, yeah,” I say, while trying not to smile at the reminder that we’re engaged, that I’m alive to be engaged, and that--no small thing--Bev said yes to my proposal. But when those in-laws include a pissed-off Lady Ty…

“It’ll be fine,” Beverley insists for the tenth time that night, coming over to the bed and dropping her engagement ring on the bedside table, safe for the night. “Mum’s been supportive over the last year, and there’s no use worrying over it.” As she climbs in next to bed and curls up against my side, she asks, “So how was your day?”

My mind skitters away from the crime scene. “Oh, it was fine. Met up with Jaget at the cafe, he’s now calling me Wizard Jesus.”

Bev is highly amused at this, just as I thought she would be. As she snickers into the pillow, I say, “Yeah, laugh it up, I knew you’d get a kick out of that.”

Still grinning, Beverley lifts her head up and asks, “And how was your walk with Thomas?”

“It was--fine.” Beverley hears the slight hesitation, and lifts her head up to look at me, a question in her eyes. “No, it was, I just…” But my throat closes up at the memory, the smell of meadowgrass in my head, Nightingale’s gray eyes fixed on my face, his hands on my shoulders, holding me up, keeping me rooted--

And how badly I’d wanted to touch him in return, and how I couldn’t, quite, let myself do it. 

“I’m just laughing some trouble adjusting to being back,” I say at last, then roll my eyes. “Not that you haven’t gotten a front-row seat to that these past few nights.”

“Peter,” Beverley says, chiding, but seems to think better of her approach. Instead, she moves to straddle my waist, in the position that’s already become very familiar--and welcome--these past few days. I immediately feel myself relaxing, enjoying the weight and the warmth of her on top of me, my hands resting on her bare thighs as I look up into her serious, beautiful face. 

“You know you don’t need to be okay right from the start, right?” Beverley asks me, worried. “I’m still incredibly fucked-up over what happened, and I was just left behind, I wasn’t off battling evil rioting ghosts for a year.”

“No, you were just dealing with me being dead, being estranged from your family, and helping Nightingale hold the Folly together,” I reply, but admit, “No, I hear you, Nightingale said the same thing, I just…” I look up at Bev, and I can hear my voice catch as I admit, “I’m home. This is supposed to be the easy part.”

“Babes,” Beverley says in a hushed voice, and leans down to kiss my forehead. “You being alive is the gift. Don’t think you have to give us another one. Just...just be here. That’s all we need.”

She kisses me softly on the mouth, whispering again, “That’s all I need.” I kiss her back, surging up to hold her in my arms, taking it all in, the smell and feel and taste of her, as I promise again and again, “I’m here, I’m right here.”

*

And I am. I mean to be. 

But the nightmares come back to me again that night, the smell of the rotten bodies hanging from the gallows at Tyburn, severed heads on spikes at London Bridge, that smell, that awful fucking smell, thick enough to choke--

And even once Beverley has shaken me awake, her soft voice in my ear drowning out the memory of someone pleading for God’s mercy as they were being dragged up to hang, I can still fucking smell it, meadowgrass and decay all tangled up together. 

“I need air,” I gasp out, stumbling out of the bed towards the nearest window, throwing it open and turning my face into the bracingly cool night air, my eyes squeezed shut as I breathe in deep.

I can faintly hear the mattress springs creaking as Beverley gets out of the bed after me, and then she comes up and embraces me from behind, her arms wrapping around my waist as she places a kiss between my bare shoulderblades, and she doesn’t say a word. 

I open my eyes to stare out at the square below, streetlights blurring before my eyes, and I shiver as the cool wind hits my bare chest, and I try, I try so hard not to think of anything at all.


	5. Chapter Five

My mum makes a point of inspecting my outfit on the evening Bev and I are set to go to see Mama Thames at her house in Wapping. She doesn't go so far as to pick out my clothes, not that I'd have let her, but she does make a point of catching me as I'm about to go down the stairs and looking me over with an appraising eye, right before adjusting the collar of the shirt I have underneath the dark blue jumper I pulled on over it. 

"Hm," she says, and keeps fiddling with it, while I try not to shuffle about like a kid. "All right, not bad."

I have to smile. "Thanks, Mum," I say, not meaning anything particular by it, which is why I'm startled when her eyes fill up with tears. "Mum?"

"Oh, hush, I'm fine," she says, blinking the tears away as she brushes at my shoulders. “You just look very nice today, that’s all.” Her mouth trembles a little bit, but when she looks up at me again, her eyes are clear and she’s smiling again. 

 

“Thank you, Mum.”

Her gaze sharpens, and she fixes me with a look I know all too well as she says next, more sternly, “This lunch you’re having is very important, you know. I expect you to do your best to heal this rift with Beverley and her family.”

“I know,” I say, and I do. 

“Besides,” my mum says next, “It’s important to be on good terms with your in-laws.” She gives me a significant look and says next, “That ring looks good on Beverley’s hand, if you ask me.”

“Yeah,” I say, fighting back a silly grin. “I think so too.” The smug look on my mum’s face at this is really beyond describing, and I have to warn her, “We’re nowhere near planning the wedding, you know.”

“I know. So long as you get there in the end. And just so long as--”

"Yeah, I know,” I reply, rolling my eyes as I step back to start walking down the stairs. “You're still expecting two grandkids down the line.”

My mother snorts. "Two? After the year you've put me through, I want four, at _least_."

*

It’s an especially gloomy day today, and I peer out the passenger-side window of the Jag at the low-hanging clouds, before looking around at the familiar leather interior of the Jag with not a little concern. Not for Bev’s driving, mind, she’s handling the car like a dream, but the way this’ll look when we get there…

“Are you sure we shouldn’t have taken the Asbo?” I ask again, and Beverley rolls her eyes. 

“Peter, it’s fine, Nightingale’s let me drive the Jag before.”

“That’s not what I mean,” I point out, and Beverley sighs. 

“This isn’t about me apologizing for the choices I’ve made this past year,” she tells me, lifting up her chin. 

“No one is asking you--”

“Aren’t they?” Bev asks, snorting. “You just wait and see.”

After a moment, I reach out and rest my hand on her knee, carefully. Beverley sighs again, but I feel her relaxing a little bit at my touch. 

“Anything I should know before I go in?” I ask her. 

“Besides everyone being mad at me?” Beverley asks, with a sharp grin, before conceding, “Well...Olivia and Abigail have some weird ‘thing’ going on that absolutely no one can pin down, no matter how much we try. Fleet and Alice are thinking about adopting yet another kid--”

“Wait, go back to Abigail and Olivia,” I say, startled. “Since when is that a thing?”

“Oh, come on,” Beverley says. “You know Abigail’s had a crush on her for ages now--”

“I knew that, but since when is it mutual? It’s a mutual thing now?”

Beverley’s smiling for real now, amused at my astonishment. “Definitely a thing. Although the actual definition of whatever they’re doing is beyond any of us, and probably beyond them too.”

“The things you miss when you’re off fighting ghosts in the underworld,” I say, and Beverley chokes on her laughter. 

*

Beverley is very quiet as we park the Jag and walk up to the front door of Mama Thames’s place, and when I take her hand, her grip is like iron. I think about reassuring her again, but I’ve said that it’ll be fine a dozen times over today, and at this point I doubt it’ll do much good--some things you just have to see through. Like an impossibly awkward family meal. 

To my surprise, Beverley knocks at the door with her free hand, rather than using her key and just walking in. At the look on my face, Beverley mutters, “I don’t want to surprise them.” I refrain from pointing out we were invited, and just rub at her knuckles with my thumb. 

It’s Nicky who answers the door, still in her awkward teen phase, braids piled up on top of her head in a high bun. She surveys us for a second before calling out over her shoulder, “They’re here!” She turns to us and says to me, “You look good for an almost-dead guy.”

“Thanks,” I say. 

“You could’ve just used your key, you know,” she adds to Beverley as we walk in through the door; Beverley just grimaces and doesn’t say anything.

As always with a visit to Mama Thames’, there’s a large crowd waiting for us as we enter, Mama Thames seated in the center with her daughters and followers surrounding. Not just them, though, as I spot Oberon in the room, thanks mostly to his height, and Alice Vaughan, Fleet’s spouse--hell, even George McAllister’s here as well, easy to spot in the crowd (especially with his ears). But try as I might to stay observant and look around, Mama Thames draws the eye as always, legs crossed at the ankles and her feet bare, hair wrapped in a gold and blue scarf that gleams in the light. 

A hush falls over the room as we walk in, and if the atmosphere is not actually frosty, it is definitely--charged. I do my best not to fidget and wait quietly, Bev’s hand in mine. 

As expected, Mama Thames is the one to break the silence, smiling at us in her usual gracious way and asking, “Do you mean to stand there until you grow roots in the ground? Come here and greet me properly.”

Beverley’s shoulders, which up until now have been so still they’re nearly at her ears, finally relax, at least somewhat, and she steps forward to hug her mother and kiss her hello, murmuring, “Hi, Mum. Thanks for inviting us.”

I hang back a little, very aware of the looks I’m getting, especially from Beverley’s older sisters--I can feel Tyburn’s gaze burning into my skull, and Effra’s watching me like I’m a very interesting bug. That doesn’t last long though, as Mama Thames says over Bev’s shoulder, “Well? Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your manners while you were away, Peter.”

“No, ma’am,” I promise, and I go to pay my respects like any well brought-up boy should. As I lean over and shake her hand, Mama Thames peers up into my face, her ageless dark eyes looking straight into mine, before she gently guides my head down to give me a soft kiss on my forehead. “Welcome home,” she says softly. “But be careful of the doorway.”

I blink in confusion as I pull back, and Mama Thames just smiles at me, enigmatic as ever, before letting me go. 

“Shall we sit down?” Lady Ty asks, her voice breaking the silence. I jerk a little at this, looking over at her, but her face gives absolutely nothing away--you’d think she was in the middle of a morning commute on the Underground, her face is that impassive. 

“Of course,” Beverley says, and when I look to her, she’s wearing an expression that’s every bit as unreadable as her sister’s. 

“Yeah,” I say, awkwardly. “That sounds--great.”

*

The food, of course, is fantastic. Mama Thames gets the formalities out of the way immediately, waving her hand at the table and saying grandly, “Eat and drink without fear of obligation.” I’m just starting in on my plate when Fleet, sitting across from me, clears her throat and asks, “So how are you settling in, Peter?”

I swallow my mouthful of food quickly. “All right so far,” I say, “Trying to catch up on a year’s worth of news hasn’t been easy, though.”

Fleet doesn’t laugh, but she does smile a little bit. “Imagine trying to keep up with it all as it was happening. I don’t envy you that project, though.”

“My mum and Abigail are talking about putting together a series of Powerpoint presentations,” I reply, before adding, “I’m not sure if I trust Abigail to manage it all on her own, if I’m honest.”

“She’d only try to fit three ridiculous lies in, tops,” Beverley says, and I could sigh in relief for how normal she sounds. 

I don’t let it show, however, just turn to look at her and grin as I say, “Yeah, but will I be able to tell that they’re lies?”

“You’re not the only one who has trouble telling that,” Fleet’s wife Alice tells me, and there’s a ripple of laughter around the table--gallows humor. 

“Yeah, so I’ve gathered,” I say. “But no, my return’s been going really well.” And, perhaps because I look over and see Ty’s pursed, disapproving mouth, and because being a good partner means backing your now-fiancee up in front of the relatives, I add, “It’s a relief to come back and find that everyone’s here and the Folly’s still standing.”

I’m looking at Ty, which is how I see the exact moment she sets down her fork and says, smiling, “I’m sure it is a wonderful feeling, to see the Folly standing right where you left it. What you might think of the methods used to keep it there--”

Beverley sets down her fork as well, and more loudly too. “Wow, you didn’t even wait for the dessert to be brought out,” she says. “This is so fucking typical--”

“Language,” Mama Thames murmurs, but in a remarkably sedate tone; absolutely no one at the table looks surprised that this is happening. Nicky’s even got her phone out under the table. 

“I’m sorry, Mum, but we all know how this is going to go,” Beverley says, clearly trying to keep the snap out of her voice, even as I hold onto her hand under the table and she squeezes it hard. “Ty’ll use her reasonable voice as she pulls out the same five arguments she’s pulled out for the past year, and none of it is going to change anything, because I did exactly what I had to do, what you agreed I _should_ do--”

“It’s not your cause,” Tyburn says, her voice snappish now, and I can hear it now, that year’s worth of arguments in her voice. “Just because Nightingale was so incompetent to get his apprentice killed, that doesn’t mean--”

“Oi,” I start, indignant, but Fleet catches my eye and shakes her head vigorously, and I don’t even get the chance to say anything else as Beverley shoots back, “So what, keeping the Queen’s Peace can’t be my cause?”

Ty clicks her tongue and says, “Your boyfriend’s not dead anymore, you don’t need to keep parroting him--”

“Oi!” I say again, more loudly, and even Effra whistles and goes, “Low blow, Ty.”

But it’s Mama Thames rapping her knuckles on the tabletop that has everyone falling silence. “All right, you two--out.” As her daughters stare, wide-eyed, Mama Thames waves a hand at them both, saying, “Get out and don’t come back to this table until you’ve got this settled for good. I’m tired of this nonsense and you’re ruining a perfectly good dinner, so out.”

After another moment of silence and blinking, Beverley and Lady Ty both push back their chairs and get up from the table. I start to rise up as well, but Mama Thames just looks at me and shakes her head, and Beverley pats me on the shoulder to reassure me to stay put. 

I look up, mouthing, You all right? and Beverley just nods, dropping a quick kiss on the top of my head as she walks out. Effra gets up as well, sighing, “Well, here we go at last.”

“Wait, why does she get to go?” I ask. 

“Someone’s got to play referee,” Fleet says with a sigh. “And Effra’s always been good at playing peacemaker.”

Beverley and Ty have only retreated to the nearest room, and I can still hear the yelling through the walls; Effra’s got her work cut out for her. 

“Jesus,” I mutter, and Oberon says, “No, no, this is good, at least they’re in the same room again.”

“Enough of this,” Mama Thames says, clapping her hands together. “Peter, tell me how your mother is doing, I haven’t seen her lately.”

“She’s good,” I say, only a little awkwardly. “Nightingale says she’s one of the most terrifyingly efficient people he’s ever worked with, which is not surprising at all.” Another ripple of laughter at that, which is cut off when we overhear Beverley’s voice rising up as she yells, “--all about your _fucking_ ego!”

“You’ve been having a year-long sulk where you shut all of us out and it’s _my_ ego--”

“We can still hear you!” Nicki shouts at the wall, and the voices come down to a low murmur. 

My face is giving too much away, I can tell from the way that Mama Thames looks at me. “Could you have done anything differently that day?” she asks me, her tone conversational.

“No,” I say. 

“Then stop trying to take credit for my daughters’ actions,” she says. 

“Yeah, Peter, not everything is about you,” Chelsea says, half-joking and half-not.

“You know what, fair enough,” I admit, lifting my wine glass to salute them both. Thank Christ, the conversation drifts away from talk about me or my year-long absence, and I listen and do my best to come off as the non-dramatic future in-law I want them to think of me as. I keep an ear peeled for any further shouting from Bev or Ty, but it’s quiet now, which can only be a good sign. At least I hope that it is, and I’m proven right when Bev and Ty finally emerge ten minutes later. Bev’s eyes are a little red, but she finally, finally looks relaxed for real now, and Tyburn doesn’t look like she’s plotting murder anymore, which is absolutely a win in my books. 

“Are you two settled now?” Mama Thames asks as they sit back down in their seats. 

Beverley nods quietly, leaning against my side, and Tyburn says, “Yes, Mama.”

“Good,” Mama Thames says with a tone of finality. “Now hurry up and eat, your food’s getting cold.”

*

Over wine and cake, we all break up into smaller groups and make small talk, and I’m not entirely surprised when Lady Ty and George make a point of approaching us, right as Bev and I finish chatting with Rom. “Peter, Bev,” Lady Ty says, wine glass in hand and her husband at her side. 

“Hey,” I say cautiously, my free arm still wrapped around Bev’s waist.

“Can I have a word?” Ty asks me, and I blink, before looking over to Bev. 

Bev asks, without an edge to her voice, “Will you behave?”

“I’m in my mother’s house, what on earth do you think I’m going to do?” Ty points out, but again without any heat to it. 

“Yeah, of course,” I say, and brush a gentle kiss against Bev’s temple. “Be right back.” Bev huffs but doesn’t argue; and given that I’m leaving her alone with the very nice but very dull George, this is definitely progress. 

I’m not stupid enough to pretend like we don’t have plenty of eyes on us, but I don’t bother to look around as Tyburn leads me off to a relatively quiet corner of the room. 

“So what are your plans now, Peter?” 

“I haven’t been back for a full week yet,” I point out. Tyburn just raises an eyebrow at me, and I sigh and say, “Well, aside from catching up on a year’s worth of news and developments…” But I have to stop there, because that is my job for the foreseeable future, finding my place in this new Folly, and the scale of that task suddenly feels...enormous. 

And of course, Tyburn’s sharp gaze doesn’t miss any of this, but for once--she doesn’t press the advantage, just muses, “It’s been a very strange year. Not just dealing with...Beverley’s new position, but I’d find myself humming Billie Holliday songs at the oddest times.” I look at her, startled, and Ty says very dryly, “Don’t suppose you’d know anything about that.”

I clear my suddenly dry throat and explain, “Your, ah, your predecesor was a fan.” 

Ty gives me a quick, but not cruel smile as she adds, thoughtfully, “Though it could be worse--it could be the entire discography of the Sugababes running through my head.”

I blush, because I remember that--I remember leading an entire pub in Victorian-era Southwark in a rousing rendition of Push The Button all at Sir Tyburn’s request--I just don’t expect Ty, this Tyburn, to know about it. “How--”

“As I’ve told you before, Peter, there’s always a little bleedthrough, from time to time,” Lady Ty says to me, before frowning a little. “Although not as much as I would’ve expected, this past year.” She purses her lips, and says abruptly, “You ought to be careful, Peter.”

“Careful how?” I ask slowly, because she’s not delivering her words as though they’re a threat--no, she’s giving me a warning 

“I don’t...I don’t know, exactly,” Tyburn says, with reluctance, before giving me a sharp look. “But be careful anyway.”

*

Beverley lets out a long sigh of relief once as we walk back into the Folly later that night. I help her out of her coat and hang it up along with mine on the nearby coat rack. 

“Do you know,” Beverley says thoughtfully, “I think we could use some drinks.”

“I wouldn’t say no,” I reply, before asking, “What, do you want to go to a nearby pub?”

“Hardly,” Beverley says, and heads off in the direction of one of the studies--the one I happen to know that Nightingale favors when he’s doing paperwork in the evening.

And sure enough, Nightingale is at the desk, suit jacket hanging over the back of his chair, and he looks up with a faint smile as we walk in. “How did it go?”

“Okay,” Beverley says, collapsing on a small couch facing the desk, kicking off her heels and curling her legs up beneath her on the couch. “But...I was thinking that I could use a drink. Peter too.”

“It went that well?” Nightingale asks, eyebrows flicking up. 

“No, it was fine, I promise, just…”

“A gauntlet,” I offer as I sit down next to her, and Beverley nods in agreement. 

“Exactly,” she says. “I had it out with Ty, for real this time, and then we had to deal with everyone else’s opinions on me having it out with Ty, and Peter stuck me in a corner with Dull George--”

“Not deliberately,” I protest, and Beverley rolls her eyes. “But yeah, it was a long night.”

“That does sound like you’ve earned a drink,” Nightingale says, amused. He gets up and heads to a small cabinet beneath the bookshelves, asking over his shoulder, “You’re not in the mood for a French 75, are you?”

“Tempting, but not tonight,” Beverley says, grinning—it must be an inside joke. “Scotch, maybe?”

“Of course,” Nightingale says easily, and looks to me. “Peter?”

“Sure, if you’re offering,” I say. Nightingale nods, and pulls out a bottle of Scotch and two glasses. As he pours out the drinks, handing the first one to Beverley, before reaching out to hand the second glass to me, I say slowly, “You know...Tyburn gave me a warning, earlier tonight at dinner.”

Nightingale freezes mid-motion, and Beverley’s attention snaps to me, lowering her glass slowly. “What?”

My fingers are overlapping Nightingale's on the glass, and the contrast of his warm skin with the cool surface is tripping my brain up, somehow. 

“Peter?” Nightingale presses, staring down at me. 

“It wasn’t anything specific,” I say, coming back to myself, and taking the glass away from Nightingale at last. Nightingale immediately sits down next to me, so that I’m surrounded on either side, but it feels comforting rather than confining. And if I’m honest, right now when I’m in the Folly, with the greatest living wizard in Europe and a living, breathing river goddess, it’s hard to worry about some vague warning. “She just said I should be careful, that’s all.”

Beverley’s mouth thins, and Nightingale’s frowning. “Careful of what?”

“She didn’t say,” I admit. “I don’t think even she knew.”

“Well, that’s alarming,” Beverley says grimly, her hand sliding onto mine and holding on tight. 

“I can’t think what it could be, honestly,” I tell them, starting to feel a thread of alarm--not at the warning, or at some theoretical threat, but at the grim tension radiating from both Nightingale and Beverley right now. “Punch is dead, Chorley’s dead. There’s no one else _left_.”

“Perhaps there is,” Nightingale says slowly, looking past me and Beverley to the window. I follow his gaze and it takes me a moment to realize what it is he’s looking at, what it means that the light from the streetlamps are dimmed, that there’s a gray haze covering everything, thanks to that heavy fog that’s rolled in while we weren’t paying attention. 

*

The fog doesn’t burn away by morning, but really, none of us--not even me--expected that it would. 

I can’t stop looking out through the windows at breakfast, even though there’s nothing to see, not with this fog blanketing everything in a haze of white. 

“Okay, so aside from the fog and Lady Ty’s warning,” Sahra says at what is a very tense breakfast table, “--what other evidence do we have that Sir William Tyburn is planning on paying a visit.”

“The fog is really fucking creepy,” Abigail mutters, glancing out with a shudder. 

“Language,” Nightingale says, but his heart’s clearly not in it. 

“There is no other evidence,” I say, and everyone looks at me when I say this, and I can feel the skepticism rolling off them. Well, that and the worry, but that’s not new. “There _isn’t_.”

“You’ve been sensing him lately,” Nightingale says, very carefully. 

It hurts to say aloud, but I have to, if only to chase that worried, fearful look off my mother’s face. “I’ve been having flashbacks, that’s not the same thing as sensing something that’s actually there. You haven’t sensed anything, neither has Beverley or Sahra or Abigail--”

“Peter,” Nightingale starts, but I barrell on right over him. 

“And even if Tyburn was somehow coming back, that doesn’t make him a threat, not to me.” Because I remember what he was like, I remember that arm thrown around my shoulders as we made our way from one pub to the next, I remember him leading me away from the executions because even if William didn’t mind seeing people dangle from the ends of a rope or being burned at the stake or being beheaded (it was, after all, part of his job description) he knew that it bothered _me,_ and he’d wanted--

He’d wanted to help. However he could. 

“I’d be a threat,” Beverley says, her voice very quiet in the room, and yet all of us fall silent at once, looking to her. She’s not looking back at me, though, she’s just staring down at her hands on the table. “If I was...if it were me, if I was a ghost, forever caught between my memories of how the world used to be, what _I_ used to be, and knowing that I was never going to be that again, with only...shallow recordings for company, for all eternity...and then someone like you showed up…”

Her dark eyes are on my face, and I can’t look away. I can’t even think of looking away. 

“Someone like you came, and gave me a purpose again, someone to look after again...and then you’d _leave_ to go back home, to leave me behind...I don’t think I could stand it. I don’t think I _would_ stand for it.”

“Except that I wasn’t his,” I say, taking her hands in mine. “Bev, I was never his to start with, and he knew that, he always knew that--”

Beverley’s looking at me, she’s holding on to my hand, but she still says, “Peter...after a whole year of having you, do you really think he would’ve still remembered that?”

And for the life of me, I don’t know what to say in response. 

Nightingale speaks into the silence. “I think, just as a precaution, we should all avoid leaving the Folly today if we can help. At least until the fog lifts.”

Nobody argues with that, not even Abigail or my mother, which is a sign of how freaked out they all are. So I keep my mouth shut, and try my hardest not to look out the window, waiting for the fog to melt away.

Or maybe I’m waiting for someone to appear. 

*

I'm not left alone for the rest of the day. Oh, everyone is fairly discreet about it, they all try to make it seem normal enough, but there it is. 

I have a round of practice in the shooting range with Abigail practicing fireballs, and then another round of helping work on her shield while Nightingale watches us both. Abigail's gotten scarily good in the year that I've been gone, and I tell her as much, which results in Abigail trying and failing to hide her smugly pleased expression. 

"Not that your shield work still couldn't use improvement," Nightingale points out. "The angle at which you project it, for example--"

Abigail tosses a knowing look my way, and I grin back at her, because some things never do change. 

"Peter, if you'll help me demonstrate?" Nightingale asks, either having missed our moment of commiseration, or more likely just ignoring it. 

"Sure thing," I say, and move to stand in front of the target as Nightingale fashions a mock-fireball to throw at my chest, and I pull up a shield just in time, angling it so that the ball of light and fake fire dissolves as it hits the ceiling. 

"You want an upward slope for when you're out in public and in an armed confrontation," I explain to Abigail. "Not that you should be getting in armed confrontations, but just in case, aim your shield up, that way you don't have to worry about ricochet."

Abigail's frowning abstractly, concentrating. "Show me again?"

"Absolutely," I say, and grin over at Nightingale. "Ready to go again?"

Nightingale lifts one eyebrow, and then launches another mock-fireball without warning, this one aimed at my head. 

By the time we're finished, I'm breathless from having Nightingale chase me around the room, flinging fake fireballs at my head. Abigail's scribbled at least two pages worth of notes in the notebook she carries with her everywhere, lamenting all the while that she can't film this on her phone, and Nightingale's beaming, his entire face just lit up and for a second I wonder why he looks so happy, and then I realize exactly why, and I have to stop myself from ducking my head.

Can't do anything about my blushing cheeks, though. 

Nightingale checks his watch and says, "Ought to call it a day, I think. Wouldn't want to overdo it."

So we all walk out of the shooting range together, leaving the echoes of my signare behind as we go. 

*

The lawyers arrive after lunch, mist beading on their coats and hair. Both of them are IC1 males, as the description would go out on the Airwave. White, posh, the older of the two with brown hair so neatly parted I wonder if he actually used a ruler. The younger of the two has a reddish tint to his curly blond hair, and freckles scattered across his face that make him look even younger than he actually is.

"Michael Pease," the brown-haired one says as he introduces himself to me, shaking my hand in a too-firm grip. "And you must be the infamous Peter Grant."

"I suppose I must be," I reply, glancing over at Nightingale, who keeps his face resolutely blank--aside from the quick glance up to the ceiling as if to ask some higher power for patience. Clearly Michael Pease has been here before. 

"Sorry, it's just that you've posed us quite the interesting legal quandary," Michael says brightly. "I don't mind telling you this is the first case in the history of the firm where we've had to legally establish a client as being alive."

I can't resist, saying blandly, "Yeah, it's a first for me too."

Nightingale coughs discreetly into his fist. "Gentlemen, if you'll all follow me to the atrium?"

Molly's nowhere to be found when we walk into the atrium, but she's set out refreshments on the table. I can tell they've been here before from the way the blond one, introduced to me as Andrew Smythe-Westfeld, says, "Oh, brilliant," as he immediately dives in. 

It is not remotely surprising to find out that both Michael Pease and Andrew Smythe-Westfeld are descendants of now-dead members of the Folly, or that their firm has been responsible for handling the legal business of the Folly since the First World War. 

“Although I--we,” Michael corrects at a loud cough from Andrew, “ _We_ didn’t get assigned to the account until my uncle Damian passed it on to us when he finally retired.” He opens his briefcase with a snap and beams at us all. “Shall we?”

Now, I am not a stranger to the dubious glories of paperwork and British bureaucracy, but this meeting is a special trial of endurance. By the time my mother comes in to see how we’re getting along, I’ve signed so many affidavits and attestations and frankly God-knows-what-else that my vision’s starting to blur, and my hand’s cramping up. Even Nightingale, who’s sitting next to me and has his own pile of papers to look over, is discreetly flexing his right hand. 

I’ve been doing a fairly good job of ignoring Michael’s rambling up until this point, right up until he says, “--really, the most straightforward part of this case has been handling your will, and oh, I should ask--you don’t intend to sue the beneficiaries of your will to get back your assets, do you?”

I slowly lift my head to stare at him. “The sole beneficiary of my will was my mother.”

“Well, yes, quite.”

“You’re asking me if I intend to sue my own mother, who spent a year grieving the loss of her only child, so I can get back my old Playstation and some cash?”

My mother, her mouth twitching from amusement--clearly she’s far more used to the antics of Pease and Smythe-Westfeld than I am--says in a dry tone, “Well, that’s a relief. Especially since I gave away that Playstation to charity.”

After the lawyers have thankfully left, I say to Nightingale and my mum, “That did not fill me with confidence.”

“I assure you, they’re not quite as addle-headed as they seem,” Nightingale says to me. “And thankfully we have a mountain of evidence to prove that you are not the, ah, legal equivalent of a cat in a box.”

“A cat in a what?” my mother asks, bewildered. 

“Inside joke, don’t worry,” I say quickly, giving Nightingale a grin that he returns in kind--but only for a moment, as his smile fades. 

“Peter, I don’t mean to press, but well, given the past few days, I do have to ask. Have you sensed anything out of the ordinary, anything at all?”

“No,” I say, and when Nightingale’s worried look doesn’t fade, nor my mother’s, I insist again, “I haven’t, honestly. The only thing I’ve noticed is this fog, and even that seems to be clearing up.”

My mum glances out the window, and then looks at Nightingale, conceding, “It _does_ seem to be lifting, Thomas.”

But the worry in Nightingale’s face doesn’t lift, as he takes one glance out the window before saying, “That doesn’t explain why it came in the first place.”

“It could just be regular fog,” I have to say. “And even if it is Tyburn, maybe it’s--like the starlings. Just his way of saying hello.”

“Perhaps,” Nightingale says, but he doesn’t sound convinced.

*

The rest of the day is like that for the most part--perfectly ordinary, even a little dull, except for how everyone’s still on edge. Even as the fog lifts by dinner time, the apprehension doesn’t.

I’d been telling Nightingale the truth earlier--I don’t sense anything, no vestigia, no sudden memories, nothing like that. And yet, I do feel...distracted, somehow, distant from everything around me, in front of me. Like I’m watching them through a pane of glass. 

Beverley notices my strange mood, of course, and likely Nightingale does as well. She doesn’t make a point of calling me out on it in front of anyone, but after dinner, when I make my excuses and call it an early night, she takes my hand as we head up the stairs together and ask in a low voice, “Peter, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I promise her, and when she gives me a look, I concede, “No, it’s just--I’m just in a mood, that’s all. I’d tell you if I was feeling anything weird, honest.”

“I know you would,” Beverley agrees, but there’s something in the slow way she says it, the hesitation in her voice, that has me pausing now, so I stop on the top step of the stairs and look at her. 

“Bev. Even if Tyburn’s planning something--you know it doesn’t matter. I’m yours, I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know,” Beverley says, but with growing conviction this time, looking me in the face with reassurance now, instead of worry. “I know, you’re mine and I’m yours.” She leans in and kisses me, softly at first and then harder, teeth nipping at my mouth in the way that always leaves me a little breathless, just that more eager to get on my knees--both literally and metaphorically, thank you. 

And Beverley more than lives up to the promise in that sharp kiss that night, using all of her strength to keep me pinned down on the bed as she rides my cock, as she leaves bite marks on the curve of my shoulder and bruises the shape of her fingers on my wrist. It’s hard and it’s brutal and I love every second of it, I’m _there_ for every second of it, present in a way I realize that I haven’t been all day, not until now, until Beverley writes the truth of it into my willing body. 

I’m there and I’m hers, and every moment of it feels like an affirmation of every promise I’ve made and intend to keep. 

And when we finally fall into an exhausted sleep, Sir William Tyburn is the last thing in my head, or in hers. 

But that doesn’t last, of course.

*

It’s the music that wakes me up that night. A soft piano, and Billie Holliday’s voice rising up above it, as though I’m hearing the song for the first time all over again. 

“...in all the old familiar places, that my heart embraces…”

Beverley’s sleeping soundly next to me, and I don’t think of waking her, because somehow I know that I won’t be able to--she’s not going to wake up, no matter what I’d try. No one will, because this isn’t for them. Just for me. 

I don’t feel any fear upon realizing this. I don’t feel much of anything, honestly--there’s just the calm knowledge of who’s waiting for me outside the Folly’s walls, and that I’m going out to meet them tonight. 

When I get out of the bed, there’s cool air swirling around my feet, and I glance down, and sure enough, there’s at least two inches of thick mist covering the floor, rising up to my ankles. It’s the kind of spooky effect you normally only get with dry ice--or a ghost wanting to announce their presence. 

The fog is blanketing the entire floor in fact, and more’s pouring in through the gap at the bottom of the door. 

Even now, I’m not worried. He’s waiting, and I’m going to meet him. 

And that’s what I do, wearing nothing but a thin pair of boxers and an even thinner undervest, I leave the safety of the Folly behind, and walk right on out the front door. 

Outside, the fog is so thick that even with the streetlights I can only see a few feet in front of me, if even that. But the music is even louder in my ears, still Lady Day crooning, and I know exactly where I’m meant to be going. I start walking right on out of the square and head off towards the garden in Bloomsbury Square, just a quick walk away.

I start humming along to the music, softly under my breath, breathing in great gulps of the cold, damp air. I don’t feel the chill or the damp, but I can just imagine the fit my mum would throw, she didn’t like having the windows open at night in springtime…

There’s something in that, something I’m forgetting, and I try to tease it out as I walk, gravel crunching beneath my feet, but the music is even louder how, and it slips away as I recognize the opening strains of Summertime, one of the few songs I’d beg my dad to play over and over again when I was a kid. 

“And the living is easy,” I sing under my breath, all other thoughts driven out of my head as I walk into the square, continuing to sing until I reach the statue of Charles James Fox, and I hear another voice melting in harmony with mine. 

I fall silent as, dimly through the fog, I see another figure waiting for me, and I know him, I know exactly who this is--and then the fog finally starts to recede, leaving us wrapped in a tiny cocoon of our own, and at last, I can think clearly. 

Sir William Tyburn grins at me as he finishes, “One of these mornings, you’re going to rise up singing,” and leaves the rest for Billie to handle on her own. 

“I would’ve expected something by X-Ray Spex,” I tell him, my heart pounding. “Maybe a bit of the Sex Pistols.”

Tyburn’s smile only gets wider. “Yeah, well, you’ve broadened my horizons, haven’t you?” He steps a little closer, looking me over, and says, his smile transforming into a little bit of a smirk, “You look good, Peter. Better than I expected.”

“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” I say slowly. “You said I wouldn’t.”

“I might be cheating a little bit at the moment,” Tyburn admits. 

“You’re cheating by a lot,” I tell him, and Tyburn gives me an odd look. 

“Peter,” he says, “Don’t you know why I’m here?”

I open my mouth to say no, I start to shake my head, but that’s the thing when you start to think clearly--it becomes something of a habit. And I remember Mama Thames’s warning, I remember Lady Ty telling me to be careful, and I could kick myself for how blind I’ve been, because they _told_ me to watch the doorway--

It’s just that the doorway is, and always has been, inside my own head. 

“I let you in,” I say in a hushed voice, staring at him. “Did I...did I call on you to--”

“No, no, I just wanted to check on you, that’s all,” Tyburn says quickly, stepping in even closer, clapping a hand around the back of my neck, his hand cold but his grip firm and reassuring. It’s a gesture he’s made with me dozens of times before, pulling me in close with a hand around my neck, and I respond as I always have, leaning in closer, my attention centered entirely on him, in this liminal space that only contains the two of us. 

And when I focus entirely on Tyburn, that means I can hear the pleading note in his voice as he explains, “I was trying to help with the nightmares, at first. Just see if I could ease them a bit, you know? And then…”

And then he realized he could get in, and it’s William, he’s never met an opening he didn’t take. 

“You told me I had to go home,” I say, my voice cracking. “I made my oaths and I had to keep to them, you told me that, you helped me _remember_ that--” It’s etched into my brain, that moment of not being able to remember my mother’s name and staring up at Tyburn in horror, and the unreadable look he’d given me in return, before he’d dragged me up to my feet, and taken me to the old London bridge, and forced me to recall the oaths I’d made to Nightingale and the Folly years ago, in a world that didn’t exist yet. 

“I did,” Tyburn concedes, and you’d have to be listening very closely to hear the way his voice wavers as he admits it. “I did, I meant it, I just...all the gods help me, I didn’t think I’d regret it _this fucking much._ ”

“William,” I say, but I can’t think of what else to tell him, not in the face of that urgent desperation. He wouldn’t be able to stand for it, Bev had warned me just this morning, God, why didn’t I listen, why didn’t I see this coming. “William, please…you have to let me go.”

“I could say the same,” Tyburn snaps right back, lifting his head as he looks at me. “You think I haven’t seen your dreams? You think I haven’t heard you, calling back to me, lost and unsteady and…”

I flinch away from him, pulling back from his touch, from his words, from the realization that he knows better than anyone just how damaged I am—

And for a moment, the sound of rushing water is all I can hear, and I can feel his grip tightening just that much more—

But it’s William. I know him. He helped me hunt down Punch, he kept me sane for a year, he pulled the spear out of my chest, I can’t rebuke him now--and because I know him, I know I won’t have to. 

And then Tyburn exhales, his grip loosening, gentling at last--and I breathe out. “Sorry,” he says, his face familiar again, and apologetic. “Sorry, that wasn’t—that’s not fair.”

I take a breath, and then another. “You’re not wrong.”

“It’s stupid, really,” Tyburn says. “I always knew you couldn’t stay. I just…”

“You just wanted me to,” I finish for him. “I know.” Dimly, I realize that the fog’s starting to recede even more, starting to dissipate, and that I can faintly hear the noises of London at night rising up--

Along with a familiar voice, calling out my name in panic. 

I jerk back a little and look around, realizing. “That’s Nightingale--oh God, they must’ve realized I left.” I try to look through the fog but there’s nothing yet--

Tyburn’s expression, when I turn back to look at him, is calm, but resigned. “Don’t worry, he’ll come here and find you in a minute.”

It’s only then that I realize what he’s trying to say. “You’re not coming back, are you.”

Tyburn shakes his head. “Even if I could...I wouldn’t need to. You’ve got enough people watching your back now, you don’t need a ghost anymore.” I bite at my lip, choking back the instinctive denial, as Tyburn smiles bravely at me and says, “We had a good run of it, didn’t we.”

“Thank you for getting me off that bridge,” I reply, and Tyburn’s smile wavers, slips--

I hold myself still for it as Tyburn leans in suddenly and brushes a kiss against my mouth, the touch of his lips faint and cold, like a wind blowing off the river. “Thanks for letting me hear that music inside your head,” I hear him say for one last time.

When I open my eyes, he’s gone, and I’m left standing by the statue of a man who’s been dead for centuries, on a clear London night.

And, standing not a few feet away, is a disheveled and speechless Nightingale, in his dressing gown and slippers, staring wordlessly at me. 

I blink in shock. Now that Tyburn and the fog have gone, I realize that I’ve been outside for God knows how long in my underwear and an even thinner shirt, that I’m chilled practically to the bone and the soles on my feet are stinging, thanks to walking around on gravel and pavement in my bare feet. 

And there’s the whole bit where I went missing in the middle of the night, and Nightingale’s just walked in on a ghost kissing me goodbye in the middle of a public square. 

I’m cold and exhausted and my brain is frazzled--really, it’s not a surprise that the only thing I can think to do is blurt out, “Hi.”

Nightingale just gapes at me, before he says, “Peter, for --” He cuts himself off as I wrap my arms around myself, shivering, and starts to strip out of his dressing gown, stalking over to wrap it around my bare shoulders, helping me get my arms into the sleeves. 

“You’re half frozen,” Nightingale mutters in disapproval, rubbing at my arms as I continue to shiver. “For God’s sake, Peter, what were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t, really,” I have to admit. Looking into his face, I can feel my heartbeat start to slow down at last, because even now I can’t shake the idea that if I’m standing next to Nightingale, I’m as safe as the crown jewels in the Tower of London. Safer, even. 

Nightingale’s looking right back at me, forehead furrowed, before he lets out a long sigh. “Can you at least refrain from driving us all into early graves from worry?”

“I wasn’t trying to scare anyone,” I protest, before wincing. “God, Bev’s going to have a fit.”

Nightingale snorts, placing a hand on my back as he guides me out of the square. “Don’t be ridiculous. She’s already having a fit.”

It’s a short walk back to the Folly, but by the time we get within sight of the front doors, I’m barely hiding how I’m wincing with each step--gravel and bare feet really aren’t meant to mix, and the hand Nightingale’d had on my back has now turned into an arm around my shoulders, as if he thinks that if he were to let go, I’d be bewitched by a ghost once more, and run off through the streets never to be seen again. 

Put like that, I can’t blame him for worrying about the possibility. 

“Peter!” I hear Abigail call out, and I turn to see Abigail cutting through the square to reach us at a dead run, a jacket thrown over her pajamas and her bare feet jammed in her trainers. She runs right up to us, stares up into my face, and then lands a hard punch on my shoulder. 

“Ow! Jesus, Abigail--”

“What do you think you’re playing at?” Abigail demands, scowling up at me. “Are you trying to put Aunty in hospital again?”

“No, I just--”

“You just ran off to meet the ghost of a river god in the middle of the night without telling anyone, yes, _brilliant_ move there.”

Still glaring at me, she pulls out her smartphone and stabs at the screen, lifting it up to her ear. “Sahra, it’s me, Nightingale’s found him, we’re back at the Folly now…”

“I didn’t exactly decide to run off, you know,” I tell Nightingale. 

His arm only tightens around me, and I should feel guilty for worrying him so much, but mostly I just think how solid and warm he feels, pressed up against my side. “Yes. That’s what I find so troubling.”

*

The Folly is in an uproar, and within five minutes of me stumbling through the front door, I’ve been stationed in Molly’s kitchen with a warm blanket wrapped around my shoulders, Bev practically glued to my side as we sit at the table, a very agitated Molly getting a pot of tea, and my mother is livid.

“Mum,” I try, for the third time in as many minutes, “I’m fine, I swear--”

My mother pays absolutely no attention to this, pacing around the kitchen as she snaps out, “Just who does this fucking _orisha_ think he is, trying to kidnap my child?”

Abigail’s eyebrow fly up at the profanity--usually when my mum starts going with the swearing, it’s in Krio so that we first-gen kids can’t understand. “Aunty!”

My mum blinks, and misunderstanding Abigail’s point, looks to where Beverley is leaning against my shoulder in exhaustion and says apologetically, “No offense meant to you, of course.”

Beverley waves her free hand dismissively. “No need--you can call him a fucking bellend while you’re at it.”

I know there’s a time and place where I can defend Sir William, and tonight is absolutely _not it,_ but Bev feels me tensing up, and lifts her head as she says to me, incredulous, “Peter, don’t you _dare_ think of defending him--”

“I’m not defending it,” I protest, and then my mouth runs right ahead of me, and I say next, “But it’s complicated--”

Abigail’s frantically shaking her head at me, and my mother’s face is a thundercloud, but I can hear footsteps getting louder, and right then Sahra and Nightingale walk into the kitchen, Toby on their heels, both of them looking utterly worn out. 

“The wards are still intact,” Nightingale says, as he sits in the nearest chair. His mouth twists as he adds, “Not that they were much use tonight.”

My cheeks prickle with heat, but I know I need to tell them. “They wouldn’t have been able to keep him out. It wasn’t the wards, it was me.”

Nightingale looks me in the face at this, and perhaps the worst thing is that he doesn’t seem angry at me. No one here is, really. “And why is that?”

I exhale, and admit, “Because I think...I think he was already here. In…” I tap my temple. 

Molly takes advantage of the brief, horrified silence to start serving out tea. For the first time, I get served before Nightingale, and perhaps unsurprisingly, my mother gets served before both of us. 

Once we all have our tea, I have to keep going. “Last night, Mama Thames warned me to watch for the doorway. I think--I think that the doorway was in my head. That it was always in my head, and he...was watching, and waiting, and when he thought I was struggling,” I can’t let myself look at Beverley as I say this, “He must have thought I needed him, so he came for me.”

“And cast magic over all of us to make sure we’d sleep right through your abduction, that was what? Details?” Abigail prods, and only falls back under Nightingale’s quelling look. 

“I never said he wasn’t ruthless, I just said he wasn’t a threat.” I reply. “Once he understood I didn’t need--” I clear my throat, and go on, “That I didn’t need him anymore, he left. That’s it.” At the politely skeptical silence, I repeat, “He’s gone, for good.”

Sahra glances from Nightingale to Beverley, and then says to me, “Peter--with all respect, you said he wasn’t going to come for you tonight either, and look how that’s turned out. I know he was...good to you, but--”

“If it wasn’t for William, I’d still be trapped on that bridge, screaming for help,” I say, and the way Beverley flinches at that is horrible, as is the look on Nightingale’s face. “I’m not excusing anything, and I’m sorry that I scared all of you. But he saved me a half-dozen times over this past year. He’s not the enemy, and he’s not coming back again.”

Nightingale’s mouth thins a little. “Good.”

For absolutely no reason at all, I think of the moment when Tyburn kissed me goodbye--or rather, the second I realized that Nightingale saw it. 

God, that’ll be fun explaining to Bev. 

"We should probably call it a night," Sahra offers up quietly. "Try and get some rest."

My mother just snorts at this. "Who's going to be able to sleep after this?" 

"We should at least try, it'll be a busy day tomorrow," Nightingale says. He looks to Beverley and says slowly, "Although if it's all right with you both, I'd like to keep watch for the rest of the night, just in case."

"Oh, that's not--" I start to say, only to be cut off by Beverley.

"That'd be great, Thomas, thank you." When I look at her, Bev just raises an eyebrow, and I don't push it further. 

Slowly everyone starts going their separate ways, Abigail grumbling on her way out, "Stop getting kidnapped, will you?" 

"I'm trying," I call out after her, faintly indignant. 

"You're buying me coffee tomorrow," Sahra tells me as she gets to her feet, hiding her yawns behind one hand. 

"I don't even have a bank account yet," I point out. 

She waves a hand at me, wearily. "I have faith you'll figure it out."

My mother also takes her leave, kissing me on the forehead as she murmurs, "Stop scaring me, eh?"

"I'm trying," I say again, but softer this time. She also kisses Beverley goodnight on the cheek, and pats Nightingale on the shoulder as she heads off. 

Even Molly goes off to do...whatever she does at night, but not without giving me a pointed look that clearly states that should I ever do this again, she will be Displeased. 

Once I'm alone with Nightingale and Beverley, I say, "For the record, I don't plan to get kidnapped by various supernatural forces. It just--"

"Happens?" Beverley finishes, resting her hand on her chin as she looks me over. 

"Well, yeah," I say. 

"You should finish your tea," Nightingale advises, then frowns down at my dirty feet. I wriggle my toes, grimacing at the dirt and bits of gravel still stuck to my skin. 

“Hang on,” Nightingale says abruptly, and gets up to start digging through the cabinets underneath the sink. I stare at him before asking Beverley, “Is he allowed to go through Molly’s kitchen like that? Because I don’t think he is.”

“I’ll take the risk,” Nightingale says dryly over his shoulder, emerging with a battered metal tub, the sort I’ve seen Molly use for peeling potatoes in the past, and he starts filling it with water from the sink. Once it’s full enough, he comes back to stoop down and set it in front of me, still staying crouched low as I carefully inch my aching feet in, hissing as the hot water hits the scrapes on the soles of my feet. 

Nightingale doesn’t look pleased at all, and I offer up sheepishly, “It’s only a bit of gravel.”

“Just a bit of gravel,” he repeats. “Just like it was a bit of fog, I suppose? Just like there was no reason to be concerned when it was clear that Tyburn was obsessed with you, that he’d be willing to--”

“Thomas,” Beverley says, very gently, and Nightingale cuts himself off, but from this angle, I can see the way his jaw’s working, even with his dark hair falling over his face, shielding his eyes from view. 

Beverley leans in against my back, carefully tucking her chin over my shoulder, her arms wrapping around my chest as she says, “What Thomas means to say is we’re glad you’re okay, and please never scare us like that again.”

I want to promise them that. God, how I want to be able to. “I’m trying not to,” I say softly, turning my head a little, so that Beverley’s soft cheek is brushing against mine. “I swear I really am.”

“I know,” Beverley says, just as quietly, and then says in a lighter voice, “And Thomas knows that too, don’t you, darling?”

“Mm,” Nightingale says, still frowning down at my battered feet. He wraps his hand around my ankle and checks the sole of my feet, muttering, “You probably won’t need bandages, which is a small blessing.”

“Yeah, thank God for calluses,” I say flippantly, trying and failing to ignore the way my heart starts pounding faster when I feel Nightingale’s hand on my bare ankle. 

The sleep deprivation and adrenaline comedown is clearly getting to me, it’s the only explanation. 

“I know he saved you,” Nightingale says, still not looking at me. “But if he tries to come for you again--”

“He’s not--” I start to say, and Nightingale runs right over me. 

“If he comes for you again,” Nightingale repeats, each word deliberate, “Then I will give no quarter, do you understand, Peter?”

It should be terrifying, hearing him say that so flatly. And yet all I can remember is being held at gunpoint in a barn, years earlier, and watching the entire building get torn apart around me and knowing I would be perfectly safe, because the most terrifying person there was on my side. 

“Same goes for me,” Beverley says, and I can hear the mirthless smile on her face when she says it. “Although that should be obvious. I’m a goddess, we don’t really share well--at least under most circumstances.”

“I know,” I say, and I do. I clear my throat and say, “But I don’t think he’ll be back, honest--we just needed to clear up a few things tonight, that’s all. Tyburn, uh...”

“Peter?” Beverley prods when I fall silent. “What is it? He didn’t try to take you back with him, did he?”

“No,” I say hastily, shifting around in my seat so that I can see Beverley more clearly, water sloshing in the tub a little bit. Nightingale sits back on his heels, watching us both, and Beverley obligingly moves to sit up on the table, looking down at me with a faint crease between her eyebrows. “He just sort of...he _may_ have had something of a crush on me?” My voice rises up at the end there, hesitant, and Beverley pulls back. 

“Wow,” she says blankly. “He must have been horribly in love with you then, if even _you_ picked up on it.”

“I pick up on things,” I protest, and the disbelief on Bev’s face is beyond anything, it really is. “But no, it, um. In the garden, earlier tonight, he sort of, er, kissed me goodbye. Just a quick thing, but. Well, you should know about it.”

Beverley--well, it’s hard to figure out what her face is doing, as it seems to cycle through ten different emotions before she finally purses her lips. “I don’t suppose this is one of those times I can borrow a rifle from the Folly, is it?” she says dryly to Nightingale. 

“Unfortunately not,” Nightingale says, a touch grimly. 

“It--” I begin, but Beverley groans. 

“Peter,” she says, in a tone that makes it clear I had better shut up and start listening in a hurry, “I woke up in the middle of the night to find you missing and fog _everywhere_ , and poor Thomas woke up to me screaming my lungs out because you’d been taken in the middle of the night in the one place that shouldn’t be possible. And now you’re telling me my sister’s predecessor was so fond of you that he not only came back to the land of the living to temporarily kidnap you, but he kissed you goodbye? And you don’t want either one of us to be upset about it?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Well, if you go and put it like _that _\--”__

__“Do you mean, if we describe tonight’s events in an accurate and concise manner?” Nightingale asks, and I turn to stare at the tone of his voice, which can only be described as snippy._ _

__My thoughts get momentarily derailed as I see his hair falling over his forehead again, goddammit. And because I get derailed, I forget myself enough to admit, “He just got confused, he thought I was still his to look after.”_ _

__Nightingale jerks his head up at that, and says heatedly, “You were never his to start with.”_ _

__His hair is falling over his eyes, and I’m still wearing his dressing robe, and I don’t think at all before reaching out and carefully brushing that wayward lock of hair back with my fingers. Nightingale goes very still, grey eyes wide as they look up to my face, but he doesn’t move an inch._ _

__I have this insane idea in my head that if I keep touching Nightingale’s hair, it’ll seem more normal, so I keep going, well past the point where his hair is back in order. It’s even thicker than it looks, and softer, the dark strands slipping through my fingers like silk._ _

__“I was his for a while, I think,” I admit carefully, letting my hand fall back into my lap. “Until I remembered where I was supposed to be.”_ _

__I feel Beverley’s hand trailing down my shoulder, and I turn to look at her, wide-eyed. She’s smiling like she has a secret, and the neckline of her shirt is slipping down over one shoulder. “And, just for clarity’s sake, that is…” she says, leading._ _

__“Right here with you,” I promise, looking from her satisfied face, to Nightingale’s wide-eyed expression._ _

__Nightingale continues to stare up at us for a long moment, then clears his throat, ducking his head down again. “Right, excellent. Just, ah, just as long as you don’t forget it.”_ _

__I watch in fascination as a flush spreads across his cheeks, and he looks good like this, flushed and disheveled and on his knees--_ _

__I mentally drag myself as far away as possible from that train of thought, because it won’t ever end well—although right now, it’s getting harder to remember why._ _

__I look up at Beverley and say again, “I really am sorry for scaring you, you know. Both of you,” I add, looking back to Nightingale._ _

__“We know, babes,” Beverley says, dropping a kiss on top of my hair. “Just so you understand, if he ever comes for you again, or if you go hareing off in the middle of the night—“_ _

__“Everything in the city’s getting flooded?”_ _

__“Babes,” Beverley says, her mouth curving, “Flooding would only be the start of it.”_ _

__*_ _

__I have a vague notion of Nightingale setting up camp for the night in a chair outside our bedroom to keep watch, and I’m gearing up to protest as we make our way up the stairs, when Beverley casually throws everything for a loop._ _

__As we walk into the bedroom, she says to Nightingale, “You’ll be staying with us tonight, obviously.”_ _

__I don’t get it at first, but it’s clear from Nightingale’s expression that he does, and he’s not at all sure about it. “Ah. Beverley—“_ _

__“You’re not sleeping on the floor or in a chair for the rest of the night, it’ll be a nightmare for your back and Molly will have kittens if she sees you,” Beverley points out, in the deliberately reasonable tone that I learned ages ago means trouble. “And the bed’s huge, it’s not like we won’t have room.”_ _

__Oh God. “Uh, Bev, hang on a second—“_ _

__“And I’ll sleep better if you’re here,” Beverley finishes, looking at us both defiantly. “Peter was snatched out of my bed while I was sleeping right next to him, I want the greatest wizard in Europe right here with us tonight, just in case.”_ _

__There is no way I can argue with that, not when Beverley woke up to the exact thing I promised her was never going to happen, not when Nightingale had to run out in the middle of the night to frantically search for me through the fog._ _

__And the truth is that Beverley isn’t wrong. I can’t think of a safer place to be, caught between Beverley and Nightingale, a river goddess and the greatest living wizard in Europe._ _

__Even if the place caught between them is my _bed_ , oh God, I’m going to be sharing a bed with my fiancée and my boss, and the worst part of it is that I don’t _want_ to say no. _ _

__And I can read Nightingale’s face as easy as any book in the Folly written in English, because it’s what I’m feeling right now--the exhaustion, hesitation, and desire caught up all together. “If Peter agrees,” Nightingale says slowly, and then flashes Beverley the ghost of a smile. “I can’t make it too easy for you to bulldoze us, after all.”_ _

__“It’s not bulldozing when you already want to,” Beverley retorts, and then they both look at me, waiting._ _

__I clear my throat. “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, that’s, um. That’s all right with me.”_ _

__I end up taking a very quick bath before bed, as Beverley politely explains to me, it’s very odd to her to have me smelling like what Beverley still associates as her sister’s signature scent, and this night has been bizarre enough for her without adding that complex to it. Once I’m out, wearing new sleep clothes, it’s to the very strange sight of Beverly and Nightingale in bed together, Nightingale propped up on pillows while Beverley curls up under the covers, her dreadlocks sprayed out along the pillow, looking like she’s about to fall asleep at any moment._ _

__They both turn to look at me, and I awkwardly shift my weight from foot to foot. “So--where do you want me?” I ask without thinking, and then feel my face heat up._ _

__If either Beverley or Nightingale notice my slip--or my flushed cheeks--they don’t give any sign. “In the middle, please,” Beverley says drowsily. “Thomas, can you--”_ _

__“Certainly,” Nightingale says, climbing out of the bed to give me room to get in. His cheeks are definitely flushed, but I don’t say anything as I slip past him to slide in between the sheets. Beverley immediately curls up against my side, her head resting on my shoulder and her hand lying on my chest._ _

__Nightingale doesn’t move to get back in at first, and when I look up, a touch nervously, he’s staring down at me and Bev with a look that I can’t quite figure out._ _

__I take a deep breath and ask, striving to sound as normal as possible in a very not-normal situation, “Thomas?”_ _

__Nightingale shakes his head a little, and offers me a quick smile. “Sorry, just--woolgathering.”_ _

__And then, with brisk movements, Nightingale carefully gets into the bed, keeping an inch of space between my body and his, which is frankly impressive given that while the bed is big, it’s not that spacious._ _

__Beverley lifts her head off my shoulder to look over at Nightingale and says, with amusement, “Thomas, if you were any stiffer, you’d be a corpse in a coffin. _Relax_.”_ _

__“I’m supposed to be on guard duty tonight,” Nightingale points out, but some of the tension leaves his body anyway, and I feel him sinking a little bit more into the bed._ _

__We’re still not touching, but I can feel how warm his body is. Nightingale must notice my constant glances at him, as he turns his head and quirks an eyebrow at me. “What is it?”_ _

__“Nothing,” I say immediately, then reconsider. “Thanks for coming to get me.”_ _

__Nightingale looks at me for a long moment. “Of course,” he says softly. That lock of hair’s falling over his forehead again, and I hesitate only momentarily before reaching up and smoothing it back. Nightingale watches me do it, his eyes lighting up, and when I finally lift my hand away he reaches up and takes it in his, his hand warm around mine._ _

__I glance down to Beverley to see how she’s taking this, but she looks very calm, smiling at both us._ _

__I feel as though I ought to say something, although fuck knows what, but Nightingale must read the look on my face, as he says gently, “Get some rest, Peter. We can deal with everything else in the morning.”_ _

__And like always--I believe him, enough that when I feel Beverley falling asleep against me, I follow her, my hand still caught in Nightingale’s as I drift off into sleep._ _


	6. Chapter Six

I groggily start to wake up around dawn, right as Nightingale tries to sneak out of bed. As he starts to shift his arm from where it’s resting across my stomach, I mumble aloud, “What’re you doing?” 

“It’s morning, Peter, I need to go,” Nightingale says, sounding both amused and far too awake for how early it is. I blearily crack my eyes open to look at him, and Nightingale’s smiling down at me, his cheek creased with pillow-marks and his expression soft. 

“Mm,” I say, yawning. “But you’re not a morning person.”

“No, but I can be roused when it’s necessary,” Nightingale says, his voice low. Beverley, still curled up against my other side, shifts in her sleep, and I can feel my eyelids getting heavier. 

“Go back to sleep,” Nightingale urges me on, voice still quiet. I make a few grumbling noises but let my eyes fall shut with relief, even when Nightingale lifts his arm away for real this time. 

Even though I’m drifting back to sleep, I know I’m not imagining the soft, almost feather-light touch to my eyebrow, tracing the curve of my cheekbone and the bridge of my nose. 

Within a moment, the touch is gone, and I fall back asleep to the sound of Nightingale slipping out of the room. 

Beverley and I finally drag ourselves out of bed a couple of hours later, at a more reasonable hour. We’re still too groggy to talk very much at first, and it’s not until Beverley’s finishing her bath and I’m shaving my face in front of the mirror that I finally pause and say, “So...what was that last night?”

Beverley’s just finished her bath and is still toweling herself dry. She looks up at my reflection in the mirror and asks me, “Which part?”

“You know,” I say, feeling my face grow hotter. “Nightingale and--and all that?”

Beverley tilts her head at me, wrapping the towel around herself. “Is this one of those times where you really don’t know what’s happening, or you’re just in denial about it?”

The response--the denial--sticks in my throat. I remember my hand resting in Nightingale’s hair last night, what it had felt like to be in the middle of the bed between him and Beverley, having their entire attention focused just on me, knowing that I didn’t want to be anywhere else, I didn’t want them to be anywhere else--and I know there’s no point in pretending. 

“I thought you didn’t like sharing,” I say slowly. 

Beverley shrugs. “I can be brought around under the right circumstances,” she says lightly. “And besides, it’s Thomas. Of course he’s going to be the exception.”

“Why?” I ask, trying my hardest to ignore the way that my heart feels like it’s beating quicker in my chest. I could ask Beverley if it is, she can hear the beat of my heart as easily as any words I could say. 

Maybe that’s how she figured it out, well before even I did. 

Whatever my heart’s doing, Beverley picks up on it, as she comes forward and tucks her chin over my shoulder, wrapping her arms around my chest. “I told you before, when you were gone, Thomas was the only person I could talk to, the only person I could relate to at all.” She pauses, and then says more gently, “How could I hold a grudge against someone who loved you?”

My throat is too tight to speak, and Beverley waits before adding more lightly, “Besides, he makes a _really_ good French 75.”

I smile a little at this, fulfilling Beverley’s goal, and say with a decent attempt at lightness myself, “Oh I see how it is, you just don’t want to lose your personal barman, eh?”

“The bartending skills are a plus,” Beverley agrees brightly, playing it up just to make me laugh, which I do. “And after the last year, I think we should all get what we want.” She drops a soft kiss on my bare shoulder. “And that goes double for you.”

*

I’m still mulling everything over as Beverley and I walk downstairs to the breakfast room, hand in hand, which is why the sight of Inspector Seawoll at the breakfast table calmly buttering toast has me stopping dead in my tracks, wondering if I’m hallucinating. What makes it even more bizarre is the way that everyone else is acting as if this is perfectly normal, chatting amongst themselves as they eat. 

“Uh,” I say intelligently. “Morning, everyone?”

Sahra, sitting across from Seawoll and feeding some of the turkey sausages to Toby on the sly, looks up and smirks at the expression on my face. 

Seawoll looks up as well and gives me a friendly sort of nod. “Morning Peter, Beverley. Just came around to give an update on the case.”

“Of course,” I say, and move to take the free seat next to my mother, with Beverley sitting across the table from us both, next to Seawoll. Nightingale is in his usual seat at the head of the table, sipping at his coffee. His gaze catches at mine, and I feel myself go hot again along my cheeks and the back of my neck. 

“You look tired still,” my mother says, looking me over with a critical eye. 

“I got some sleep, don’t worry,” I promise, while being very careful not to look at either Beverley or Nightingale. 

“Hmm,” my mother says doubtfully, and takes my plate so she can start piling food on it. I sigh a little as she keeps adding more food on, and she gives me a glare that tells me I’m not leaving this table until my plate’s clean. Abigail eyes the food, and then me with a look that says _what did you expect?_

I keep an ear open as I dig in, and Seawoll and Sahra are discussing the Notting Hill case, where the prime suspect is turning out to be the victim’s boyfriend, who has no alibi and was observed having a massive blow-up argument with the victim in public just three days before the murder. 

“He’s coming in for questioning later with his solicitor,” Seawoll says with relish. “Thought you wouldn’t mind having a go at questioning him, Sahra. It’ll be good to have you there, especially if he tries any…” Seawoll wiggles his fingers in the Met-approved signal for ‘magic’. “You know, funny stuff.”

“Do you mean magic,” my mother says in an arch tone, and Seawoll, to my surprise, turns to give her a little grin. 

“Yeah, that,” he says dryly. 

I look around to see if anyone is finding this exchange as surprising as I do, but even though I’m seeing lots of amused looks from everyone else, I’m not seeing any surprise at all. 

“With a bit of luck, we’ll have this case done with before the weekend,” Seawoll says smugly. 

“Wouldn’t want to see those rugby tickets go to waste,” my mum says, and something in the way she says it has me looking from her, to Seawoll’s openly fond expression, and then sitting back in my chair as the penny finally drops.

It’s a good thing neither one of them is looking at me, because my face is a picture, at least from the way Nightingale starts coughing suddenly and dramatically.

Sahra—who’s fighting off a grin of her own—goes so far as to solicitously thump him on the back, which offers up enough of a distraction that I can at least try to get my face back in order.

Seawoll and my mother? Jesus Christ, how—my brain is still reeling but I have enough sense not to let it show, and that’s before Beverley touches my arm and gently shakes her head at me, a silent warning to get it together, even if her lips are twitching.

So when it comes out at the table that, sure enough, one of Seawoll’s tickets is meant for my mum, I manage to keep my comments and my impending freak out to myself, only saying in a fairly calm manner, “Oh, that’ll be nice,” instead of immediately demanding to know when a) my mother even started going to sporting events and b) started attending them with Inspector Seawoll. 

My mum is watching me with a sharp expression, but when I don’t act the fool, she relaxes enough to say, “Yes, I think so too, I’ve been looking forward to it.”

I only wish I was imagining the tinge of pink at the tips of Seawoll’s ears.

Still stunned, I look over to Nightingale, who isn’t coughing any longer, but still has a hand over his mouth just in case—but I can still see the sparkle of amusement in his grey eyes.

As soon as I can plausibly leave the table as breakfast comes to an end, I hastily follow Nightingale to the magical library, where we’re unlikely to be interrupted. As soon as the door is safely shut and locked behind us, I turn to face Nightingale, who takes one look at my face and bursts out laughing.

“What the hell,” I say eloquently, staring at him. “Seawoll and my mum, are they…” 

My voice trails off, and Nightingale takes a seat in a nearby armchair, grinning up at me still. 

“It’s been a slow courtship, if that reassures you,” he offers up, and just laughs again at the expression on my face. Courtship, Jesus. “Since, oh, Christmas, perhaps?”

“That’s three months!”

“Yes, they have rather been making a slow go of it,” Nightingale says, but relents a little in the face of my glaring at him. “If it helps, I was nearly as floored as you are now when I realized what Alexander’s, ah, intentions were.” He pauses briefly, and then slowly starts to smile again, admitting, “Then I had a great deal of pleasure imagining what your reaction would’ve been to the news.”

“Does my freakout live up to your expectations?” 

“Oh, it exceeded them, I promise you,” Nightingale says solemnly, and laughs again as I roll my eyes at him. “No, that look at the breakfast table, that was it exactly, I saw it so clearly in my head last winter—“ He cuts himself off before saying more quietly, “But I find that the real thing is still an improvement.”

I wait a beat as that sinks in. Nightingale just looks at me patiently, waiting for whatever I decide to talk about next, and I know that whichever way I take the conversation, he’ll follow my lead.

Somehow knowing that makes it easier for me to clear my throat and plunge right in, saying, “About this morning—and last night too, I guess—Bev and I, we talked a bit, cleared some things up.”

Nightingale’s face is calm, meant to keep from giving anything away. Not that it really matters, when I can still feel the echo of his touch on my skin. “I see.”

It should be harder to say this to him in broad daylight, in the library of all places, with Nightingale perfectly put together in his neat suit and neater hair. But I want to say this, I have to say it, because what if something happens and I lose my chance? “Beverley said it won’t be a problem, sharing with you.”

Nightingale’s lips part, and then he says slowly, “Peter, that—is very generous, but I hope you don’t feel any obligation to—reciprocate.”

“Inviting someone into my bed isn’t something I do out of obligation,” I reply and when Nightingale’s expression doesn’t change, I add more softly. “I wanted you there last night. Bev was the one who said it first, but—I wanted you there with us. I still do.”

I can see the hope he’s trying so hard to conceal. “To keep watch over you while you sleep?”

“If you want,” I concede, starting to walk over to him. Nightingale doesn’t take his eyes off me as I approach, and it feels almost inevitable, leaning over him in the chair, my hands braced on the armrests on either side of him. My heart’s pounding, anticipation rising up inside of me and pushing me on, saying _yes, now, right now, right this second--_

God, the way he’s looking at me. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to notice, and to admit to myself how much I like it. “Frankly,” I say, noticing the way my voice has dropped down lower, “I’m hoping for something else entirely.”

Nightingale’s watching me with fascination, a faint flush to his cheeks, and my heart is beating so loudly that I think even he could hear it. “Is that so,” he breathes out, his mouth closer now.

I could keep talking, keep trying to convince him, but what’s the point? There’s no way he doesn’t realize what I want, what I’m offering.

So, my heart still pounding in my ears, I close my eyes and lean in to close the space between us, brushing a kiss against his still, parted mouth.

There’s a long moment where Nightingale doesn’t respond at all, and just as I start to worry that I’ve got this all wrong, he starts to kiss me back, so hesitant that it makes my chest ache. 

I keep it light at first, letting him set the pace, until he reaches out and cups my face in his hands as he starts to deepen the kiss, slow and lush, until I’m using the armrests to hold myself up, as I don’t think my knees will hold my weight on their own. 

As if by accident, his fingers press against that sensitive spot under my ear, and I make a soft noise into his mouth without thought, and Nightingale goes still again, and then he just moves—standing up in one fluid motion and wrapping an arm around my waist to pull me in closer, the kiss turning harsher now, more urgent.

Not that I’m complaining in the slightest. I give as good as I get, my hand sliding up into his soft hair, the other clutching at his back, feeling the solid muscle of his body beneath my palm.

Nightingale can’t seem to settle on what he wants, his mouth moving to my jaw, the pulse point at my throat. “Peter,” he murmurs, his voice as hoarse as if he’s been shouting. “You—“

“Yeah?” I sigh, and Nightingale just groans and kisses me again. Dimly I’m aware that we’re moving, but it’s not until I’m backed into the edge of the writing desk that I realize how far we’re going, how far we’ve already gone.

I wonder if Nightingale will push me back against the desk, and the image of it, me spread out against the surface with Nightingale’s bulk pinning me down, makes me go hot all over. 

And right as Nightingale’s teeth are nipping at my lip, just as we’re starting to slowly rock against each other, just as I think that fantasy might come true—I hear someone knocking on the door. 

“Sir,” Sahra calls out, voice muffled through the thick door. “Are you there?”

Nightingale and I slowly pull apart, staring dazedly at each other as reality sinks back in.

“Your hair,” I say breathlessly, and Nightingale swears under his breath and drags his fingers through it in an attempt to put it in order. I tug at my jumper and wipe at my mouth, hoping to look somewhat less like I was less than five minutes away from being ravished on that desk, by Nightingale.

Once we’re mostly put to rights again, I hope the door and smile at Sahra. “Hey.”

Sahra’s eyes narrow momentarily, but instead of calling me out on whatever weirdness she’s noticed, she thankfully elects to ignore it, walking in and saying, “Sorry to interrupt, but Postmartin called; he’s driving down from Oxford today to pick up the books Beverley got for the Bodleian.”

There’s something strange in the emphasis she puts on this, and I look to Nightingale, who is wearing a carefully blank expression.

“Well, that’s good,” I say. “It’ll be good to see Postmartin again. Even if I’m pretty sure he’ll be more excited about the books than seeing us.”

“It’ll be good for you to catch up with him,” Sahra agrees. “Especially after everything that’s happened.”

It’d be easy to assume she’s referring to Tyburn’s appearance last night, or even my return, except the way that Nightingale’s mouth purses tells me it’s not that at all.

And when Nightingale politely asks Sahra if she can give us a moment of privacy, she looks not at all surprised.

“What is it?” I ask once we’re alone again.

Nightingale waits a beat, then asks, “Did Beverley ever explain why she was in Birmingham the day you returned?”

“She said she was out there negotiating for a book collection.”

Nightingale gets right into it. “The reason for that is because last winter the Bodleian was robbed, and the thieves got away with dozens of priceless books,” Nightingale explains. “Most of which were from the Folly, or Casterbrook.”

“Jesus Christ,” I say. “The thieves, did they—“

“We caught them,” Nightingale tells me, his mouth twisting. “But many of the books were damaged or lost outright. Beverley has been working with Postmartin to find replacement editions of the books that were lost.”

It’s a simple, straightforward explanation, but I know there’s more to the story than that. So after a minute of looking at him, I ask outright, “So what’s the rest of the story?”

Nightingale doesn’t deny there’s more. His mouth twists again before he says slowly, “There is, but—I think Beverley should be here for the telling of it.”

“But you are going to tell me,” I press.

“Yes,” Nightingale says, a promise I can rely on.

Satisfied, I look back at the desk, and Nightingale’s sudden flush is clear and more obvious than the flush that comes to my own cheeks.

“Raincheck?” I offer up after a second.

Nightingale’s expression lightens. “Certainly,” he says, and pauses only momentarily before stepping forward to brush a kiss against my mouth, soft and brief.

And somehow, it’s the echo of that kiss I carry with me as I walk out of the library, Nightingale shutting the door behind us as we leave.

*

I’m actually wrong about Postmartin as it turns out—he’s far more interested in interviewing me than in the book collection Beverley’s gathered for him. Although as Abigail points out, if anything could trump books for Postmartin, it would be a man who literally returned from the dead. 

“Congratulations,” she says, to which I reply just as dryly, “Thanks.”

“I don’t mean to disparage Beverley’s excellent work,” Postmartin says hastily, and Beverley waves him off with a smile and a laugh. “But my goodness, the adventure you’ve had! The things you must have seen!”

I keep smiling, but it’s harder to keep it on my face. When Beverley reaches out into the space between our chairs to take my hand, I take it and hold on tight. “Yeah, I saw—some incredible things,” I concede.

Postmartin, thankfully, looks at my face—and my death-grip on Beverley’s hand, and doesn’t press harder, although he’s not wrong—someday I’ll have to talk about in detail, write it all down for posterity. The thought makes me feel a little sick, and i set down my cup of tea, the teacup rattling against the saucer.

“But it’s not just me living—or not living in interesting times,” I point out. “That robbery this past winter sounds horrible.”

Postmartin’s face darkens. “That bastard Fournier and his thuggish lackeys,” he fumes. “I can only be thankful the Met saw the sense of not pursuing another inquiry against Thomas—or dear Beverley here.”

I jerk a little at hearing that, and as Beverley's hand tightens around mine, my mother, sitting in the chair opposite us, jerks a little, looking from my face to Postmartin's, and then finally settling on Beverley's with a little frown. 

She gets up to her feet and says abruptly, "Peter, I'm going to get some things from the kitchen, come and help me."

"Wait, really?" I ask without thinking, and she turns her glare upon me. 

“Yes, really,” she says, and I’m not stupid enough to ignore the tone in her voice. So I get up and follow her out and down to the kitchens, where Molly stares at us in surprise from where she’s preparing more tea and loading another tray full of pastries and biscuits. 

My mum turns back to look at me, that frown still on her face. “I need--someone needs to tell you about Fournier.”

“Okay,” I say slowly.

My mum abruptly sits down, and Molly gives a wide-eyed glance at both of us, before hastily scuttling out of there. I sit down next to her, and says gently, “Mum, what happened?”

She doesn’t speak at first, and then shakes her head a little. “You don’t know what it was like, when you were gone. Thomas and Beverley were running themselves ragged, the Met was watching all of us so closely, even with Folsom gone--and then Fournier showed up, and he and his gang stole nearly a quarter of a million pounds in priceless books from the Bodelian.”

I wait for the rest of it. 

My mother taps her fingers against the table, a gesture I’ve seen her do hundreds of times throughout my childhood while she was on her phone to her relatives, looking over the bills we’d struggle to pay during lean times. “If he’d been smart he’d have just taken the books and gone, but he was stupid--like Chorley. He wanted to show off, make himself look like a big man, like a legend.”

“He wanted to go up against Nightingale for real,” I realize. 

“Mm.” My mother’s still frowning, lips pressed tightly together. And then she looks up at me suddenly, and she says, “So, three days after the robbery, he snatched me off the streets when I was doing my shopping, and kidnapped me.”

For a moment, all I can feel is the horrible cold disconnect between the sight of my mum sitting there, alive and healthy and perfectly unharmed, and the words she’s saying, the experience she’s telling me about. “Mum,” I say, through numb lips, and my mother immediately takes my hand in mine.

“Peter, I’m _fine_ ,” she says. “I spent an uncomfortable weekend in a warehouse, that’s all. The worst I got out of it was a cold.”

I stay quiet at first, swallowing back my horror, and then say slowly, “Tell me what happened.”

My mother takes a breath, and she starts to talk again--about the warehouse, about being tied to a chair and listening to a bunch of “idiotic men” talking in French, as she waited for rescue. 

“But that was the problem, I knew that Beverley and Thomas would come for me--and they knew it too, they were counting on it.” Her mouth curls in disgust. 

When she doesn’t continue, I say carefully, “Nightingale said the thieves were caught.”

She looks up at that, startled, and then her mouth thins. “They weren’t caught, they were killed. Beverley and Thomas killed them.”

It shouldn’t come as a surprise. That’s what I keep telling myself, as my stomach drops and my skin goes cold. 

“I heard the pipes creaking first, from the water,” my mother says, her tone distant and her gaze far-away, as if she’s back there in that cold warehouse, tied to a chair and waiting to be freed. “One of the men fell to the floor, choking--he’d drowned, but there wasn’t any water to be seen. And then another, and another. Fournier was the only one who wasn’t afraid, even as his men fell around him, even as Thomas tore apart the building around us, bricks flying up into the sky.” She lets out a strange, shaky little laugh, and admits, “I felt like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, with the tornado, you know?”

“I know,” I say gently. 

“And then Thomas walked in, and he and Fournier started fighting--Fournier was trying to show off, but it didn’t matter, nothing he did landed on Thomas at all. And he was talking, taunting Thomas, and then he started to choke—“

My mother has been doing her best, all this time, to sound steady and calm. But now, despite all her efforts, I can hear the horror of that night seeping into her voice.

“He was already on the ground, blood pouring out of his mouth, when Thomas finally spoke. He’d cast a spell on Fournier before he’d even walked in. Thomas had weakened the walls of a major artery in his heart. Fournier was already dead before he’d cast a single spell, and he hadn’t even noticed.”

I shudder at the thought of it, Nightingale dueling with a dead man walking, coolly waiting for the inevitable collapse, standing over his probe body as Fournier choked on his own blood—

But my mother had been there too, tied to a chair in an abandoned warehouse in the middle of winter, all so that some idiot with too little sense and too much magic could show off—

“God, what a fucking mess,” I groan, scrubbing at my face. “Mum, I’m sorry.”

She pats my hand in reassurance. “It was months ago, and I’m fine.” But then Mum pauses, and says next, with a little laugh that doesn’t fool me for a minute, “I had a wizard and an _orisha_ coming to save me, how could I be anything but fine?”

*

That evening in our bedroom, I have Beverley and Nightingale’s attention firmly fixed on me, but not in the way I was originally hoping for.

Beverley, sitting on the bed, is the first to speak. “I wanted to tell you myself. To tell you with Thomas. We just—needed to work up to it.”

I’m sitting at the small writing desk, fiddling with one of the small figurines—a bird carved out of stone. It’s a crude sculpture, but I can almost imagine it looks like a starling. “Yeah,” I say, holding it in the palm of my hand. “Telling a bloke his mother was kidnapped and held hostage, that’s the sort of thing you have to ease into.”

“Peter,” Beverley says softly, but she doesn’t say anything else. 

I keep looking down at my hands. “How did you avoid another inquiry?”

Nightingale finally speaks. “With Folsom gone, there wasn’t anyone left pushing for it. Particularly since there was no...easy explanation for how the men died. And there was quite a bit of political turmoil in the Met and the Home Office--no one was particularly interested in looking too closely at the matter.” 

And a government cover-up on top of everything else. Lovely. 

“I’m not sorry we did it,” Beverley says next, abruptly, and when I look up to stare at her, she’s looking back at me, mouth thin and stubborn. “Fournier sent a letter to the Folly--he was _gloating_ over it, he took your mum and tied her to a chair and threatened to…” My stomach cramps at that unfinished sentence, but Beverley just finishes with, “I’m not sorry he’s dead and I’m not sorry for what we did.”

“Did I ask if you were?” I reply, suddenly feeling very tired.

“I can look at your face, Peter, you don’t have to say a word,” Beverley snaps back at me. 

“Well, once you’re finished having this argument with the imaginary version of me in your head, let me know when I can get a word in.” I know this is the wrong way to handle this, but the problem is that I can’t think of what the right thing to say is--all I can feel is this awful nausea in the pit of my stomach as I think of everything that’s happened, everything they did, everything I did--

“Peter,” Beverley starts, her voice tight with frustration, but Nightingale shifts his weight or signals her somehow and she falls back. Breathing out through her nose, Beverley tries again, “We knew you wouldn’t approve, but--”

That’s the breaking point. There’s a bitter, almost metallic taste in my mouth as I stare at them both and say, slowly, “Did you forget the part where I cut a man’s head off last year? What the hell makes you think I’m in a position to make any sort of moral judgment, anyway?”

All the color drains out of Nightingale’s face, and Beverley stares at me in mute horror. 

“Peter,” Nightingale finally speaks, his voice sounding oddly strangled. “You can’t honestly think--”

I turn away from him quickly, staring down at the figurine in my hands. “I remember what happened that day. He was being sequestered by Punch, he was screaming, and I thought, this is it, this is my chance. And then he turned, and started coming at me, and I had to act. I had to stop him.” I can’t look at either of them as I say this next part. “But my memory’s been acting strange, since I came back. The year I spent away--sometimes I can hardly remember any of it, sometimes the memories are the clearest things in my head. And maybe what happened in that warehouse...is what I want to believe happened. Just me remembering what I want to be true.”

“Peter,” Beverley says urgently, “He deserved to--”

“It’s not about what he deserved,” I retort, my voice sharp, bitter. “Either we’re the law or we’re not. Either I’m a police officer, or I’m just some bastard on the street with the biggest weapon around.” I’m looking at Beverley as I say this, but I see Nightingale flinch a little at that. 

I take a deep, deep breath. “I don’t mean to...it was my mum in there, I’m glad you saved her, I just--”

Nightingale looks me in the face. “You think we could have saved her without killing anyone.”

I don’t say anything. We all know what I’m thinking, anyway. 

Nightingale looks down at his hands and starts to speak, the words slow and halting. “I’ve always...been very grateful to your mother, for all her work this year. I’m well aware she owed me nothing, perhaps owed me...a great more bitterness than what I received. And I--I had a duty to her, and when that bastard took her--” Nightingale swallows. “I wanted to get her back safely, and I wanted to make a show of strength, I suppose. To warn off the next Fournier, the next Chorley.”

“I wanted to wreck them,” Beverley says. “We were meant to keep her safe, and then some idiot goes and kidnaps her--I was so angry, I couldn’t even _see_.” She gives me a sad smile, and says next, “But that’s not what you want to hear at all, is it?”

“I don’t know what I want,” I admit, and it hurts to say. “Aside from making sure my mother never gets kidnapped again.”

“Now that,” Nightingale says, “--is something we can agree on.”

*

That night, I dream of an execution. 

I’m the one driving the cart up to the tree, the crowd surging around us as I try and keep the horse I’m on from getting nervous. I’ve learned how to ride a horse in my time here, and it’s serving me well today. It’s still slow going though, with the crowd surging as it gains in size, jeering loudly and throwing rotten food and other objects I don’t want to think about at the prisoner--though the smell is a dead giveaway. 

“How do you do, Mr. Punch, how do you do today?” the crowd chants, mocking. 

I take a deep breath and ignore it all as best as I can. William is up there leading the crowd, he’ll keep things from going too far. 

All I have to worry about is the prisoner I’m transporting.

“I never eat supper, they are not wholesome,” Mr. Punch whines, over and over again from where he’s standing in the cart, doing his best to goad me into following the old script. 

My head is pounding, from the heat of the summer sun and the noise and smell of the crowd, my concentration slips just enough that I say without thinking, “Come out and be hanged.”

“You would not be so cruel,” Mr. Punch wheedles, and I feel a red haze wash over me. 

The words are hundreds of years old, but I say them with enough anger that they feel as though they are being said for the first time. “Why were you so cruel as to commit so many murders?”

“But that’s no reason you should be cruel, too, and murder me,” Mr. Punch insists, and I don’t know how to respond to that--for one moment, I feel totally disoriented, I don’t know what I’m doing or why I’m here, I want to go home--

And the energy of the crowd changes, it shifts, as they start raucously singing Just The One by the Levellers as they come up to the last stop before we reach the tree at Tyburn. One last drink, except it’s never just the one. 

The crowd parts just enough that I can see William at the center of it all, and for just a moment, I can hear his baritone as he sings, “Clear your head, we won’t be long.”

Whatever he’s done to get through to me, it works, enough that I can break free of the script and say, “Mr. Punch, today you will be hanged for your crimes until you are dead, and none of your tricks can save you today.”

The furious shrieks of rage are not a surprise to hear, and I turn my head away and set my teeth and I keep the cart moving along. 

At last, at long last, our journey is over, and we’ve reached the chestnut tree at last. Tyburn leaps into the cart gracefully; I manage to get off the horse with a minimum of fuss. 

My head is still pounding as Tyburn gets the noose, already hanging from the tree. The sound of the crowd is a dull roar in my ears, as though I'm trapped underwater. If I listened, I'm sure I'd hear hawkers selling their wares, tough meat that's lost whatever original flavor it had, trinkets and fake confessions from the accused, and anything else you could imagine. I've seen enough public executions to know by now. 

But I have a job to do, I have a job--

Punch is struggling wildly against Tyburn's grip, for all that he's tied up, and I move for him, and for a moment all three of us are caught in a violent dance, Punch repeatedly doing his best to manage one last grand escape, while we--we do our best to kill him.

Punch isn't reading from the script anymore, he must realize it's not going to work this time. Instead he's just wailing, the high-pitched sounds ringing in my ears until I'm ready to scream myself. 

Finally Tyburn lands a blow to Punch's stomach, and once Punch is bent double, Tyburn drops the noose around his neck and pulls tight, dragging Punch upright once more as he does. 

The crowd falls silent, as does Punch, as his gaze jerks between the two of us. 

"Constable Grant," Tyburn says, sounding not even a little bit out of breath. "Read out the charges."

I do, pitching my voice to ring out over the crowd, who start stirring to life as I keep going down the long, long list, whistling and jeering. Unfortunately Punch stirs back to life as well, as he says to Tyburn, "Ah, so you are the real master here!"

I don't falter in my recitation--frankly, this is a pretty weak attempt by Punch to throw me off my stride--but something about it must jar William, as he says with an edge to his voice, "Shut up."

I give him a look at that, but Punch can smell blood now. "Master, master, what will you do when your servant goes? Will you let him go? And will you let him go, river god?"

Despite myself, my gaze jerks to Tyburn's pale face, the thin line of his mouth, before I tear my gaze away and keep going. It doesn't matter, Punch is just trying to get to us any way that he can. It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, I have a job, this is my job. 

At last I finish, and Tyburn asks, that same edge to his voice as he demands. "Does the prisoner have anything to say?"

That grotesque face sags for a moment, and it should be a triumphant moment, watching him realize at last that he's lost. Instead I just feel hot, and exhausted, and sick to death of all of it. 

Christ, let it end. 

Finally Punch starts to sing. “Mr. Punch is one jolly good fellow,” he begins. “HIs dress is all scarlet and yellow…”

 

As if in a daze, the crowd starts to sing it with him, and the jaunty song becomes a dirge. 

“With the girls he’s a rogue and a rover; he lives, while he can, on clover…”

Tyburn jerks his head at me, and I climb out of the cart, my legs feeling shaky and numb. Tyburn dismounts as well, and goes to the horse’s head--

“When he dies--” Mr. Punch says, and it’s the last thing he says, as Tyburn pulls the cart away and his body drops and hangs in mid-air, jerking horribly, his legs _kicking_ , oh God, oh God, oh God.

And there Mr. Punch’s comedy ends. 

I break and turn away from the sight, bile rising up in my throat. The crowd is cheering lustily, all signs of mourning gone now, and the song’s back again, but it’s a cheerful bouncy jaunt once more, something you can tap your toes to. 

The nausea rises up again, too fast and too strong to fight, and I lurch to the other side of the tree to throw up, purging my stomach until I’m light-headed. I’m not sure of when Tyburn gets to me, I just know he’s there when his hand reaches out to grip my shoulder, comforting, as he says, “I’ve got you, it’s all right.” He keeps repeating it, over and over, and I don’t know the exact moment when I realize that the voice in my ear has changed, grown softer, become a female voice, and that the hand on my shoulder is gently shaking me awake, because I’m nowhere near that chestnut tree, I’m home and in bed and I’ve--been dreaming. Or remembering.

“Peter,” Thomas is saying, his voice low. “Peter, wake up. It’s March 17th, 2018, it’s one am, you’re in the Folly--”

“I know,” I manage to say through dry lips. “I know, I’m awake now, I-- _shit_.”

Beverley’s stroking my hair now, and she twists around to turn on the bedside lamp and I flinch back a little at the sudden light. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks me quietly, and I’m already shaking my head, but the words slip out anyway. 

“It wasn’t--it was just Punch’s execution. His hanging. That’s all.” I don’t want to think about it, I just want to lie here in this bed and soak up the warmth from their bodies, I want Nightingale’s arm around my waist and to bury my face in the nape of Beverley’s neck. 

So, after a moment of consideration, I do just that, tugging at them both until we’re all arranged the way I want, me on my side and Nightingale and Bev on either side of me. 

Beverley hums in satisfaction as I curl up against her, but asks again, “You sure you’re all right, babes?”

“I’m fine,” I say, willing my heartbeat to slow down, relishing the way that Nightingale’s hand tightens on my hip as he inches even closer. “It’s fine, just a bad memory.”

It still takes me a long time to fall back asleep that night.

*

I’m the first to get up the next morning. Both Beverley and Nightingale blink up at me sleepily when I tell them I’m going for a quick morning walk around the square. “D’you want company?” Nightingale asks doubtfully, but hums in relief when I tell him no, it’s okay for them to sleep in. He buries his head back in the pillow, hair disheveled, pillow creases on his face--and I hesitate only briefly before kissing his cheek, and then kissing Beverley’s cheek as well before I slip out of the room. 

A little to my surprise, Sahra’s already up when I come downstairs, sipping at her coffee, two pieces of toast on her plate. “Morning, Peter.”

“Good morning,” I say, a little awkwardly. 

“Beverley still asleep, then?” Sahra asks casually. 

“Yeah, she’s still out,” I confirm, sitting down across from her. 

Sahra hums in acknowledgement, and says, very casually, “Nightingale’s not up yet either, I don’t think.”

“Mm,” I say, quickly hiding my face behind the giant cup of coffee I’ve poured myself, avoiding Sahra’s gaze. 

Sahra, thank God, doesn’t press any further on that; instead she says, very gently, “We didn’t see much of you, after Postmartin’s visit.”

I look over at her. “You mean, after my mother told me about what Fournier actually did.”

Sahra nods slowly. “Yeah. That.”

I look down at my hands. It still feels odd, seeing my bare wrist, no antique watch to be found--the Omega watch was lost in the warehouse last year, and I haven’t gotten a replacement yet. “Was there another inquiry?” I ask after a moment. 

“No, not really. The whole investigation was sort of a whitewash, if I’m honest.”

I jerk my head up at that. “How--” A thought occurs to me and I ask slowly, “Did Tyburn put the fix in?”

“I can’t prove it,” Sahra says, “--but yeah, I think so. To be fair, though, I don’t think she had to put in much--nobody was really willing to have Nightingale go down for this one.”

I can feel my eyebrows climbing up my forehead, and Sahra sighs. “It wasn’t--it wasn’t like the first inquiry. That was--Folsom had more leverage that time, because you were gone. If you had made it out of that warehouse in Greenwich, I don’t think--I think there were a lot of people, much higher up the chain, that were very relieved to find out Martin Chorley wouldn’t go to trial.”

I don’t say anything. How can I? I’d thought about the issue, of course, how on earth you could arrange a fair trial, a jury of twelve of your peers, when half of Martin Chorley’s crimes involved magic and the British public that would comprise a jury had no idea magic existed? 

“And with Fournier,” Sahra continues, “He was already wanted in France and across the continent, mostly for robbery and assault, he was caught dead to rights holding your mum hostage, and the only people who died were him and his lackeys, who all had priors. It was shockingly easy to sweep under the rug. Nobody cared.” Sahra pauses before adding, “The fact that there was a cabinet reshuffle and a new Home Secretary at the time probably didn’t hurt either. I think that the Home Office looked at Nightingale and Beverley, at what they could do and were capable of doing, and decided they preferred to keep them on their side rather than not.”

“And after it was all over, you joined the Folly,” I say. 

Sahra smiles a little, rueful. “Yeah, I thought you’d notice the timing of that. I’d been--I had been thinking it over before then, but after Fournier it was...strongly encouraged that I officially join up. And so here I am.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No,” Sahra says without a pause. “No, they were right. Even Seawoll thought so, and he was grumbling over it for weeks--although your mum helped bring him around, eventually.”

She’s got a little smirk on her face as she says this, and I groan immediately, “ _Sahra_ ,” and she just starts laughing at me.

“Your face is priceless right now,” she tells me, still chuckling. 

“Hah, hah,” I say. “But seriously--you’re sure this is where you want to be.”

Sahra just raises an unimpressed eyebrow at me. “I’ve been learning Latin for months now, and you still think that question needs to be asked?”

“I just...I wanted to be sure,” I say. I want her to be sure, I don’t want her to have been pushed into it by the space of my absence and because the Met decided that Nightingale and Beverley needed a keeper to watch them, keep them from going too far just in case. 

“I am sure,” Sahra says, and she looks it, she sounds it, and I suppose the only thing left is to take her word for it. 

But there is still one thing I want to know. “Did it bother you? What Nightingale and Beverley did to--to Fournier.”

Sahra blinks, momentarily surprised. “Honestly—I think we all expected it. Even Seawoll, and he was hammering away at Nightingale after the raid, he said to Stephanopoulos that it wasn’t like we could expect anything else, not when it was your mum who was the hostage, and—and there was no one around to keep him in check.”

“And that became your job,” I say.

Sahra shrugs. “Mostly. If I’m honest, I’m just hoping there won’t be any more kidnappings.” She looks me over and asks, “Going for a jog?”

“Yeah. Left everyone a note, thought I’d try and break in my new trainers.” I say, looking down at my shoes.

“Care for some company?” Sahra asks.

I raise an eyebrow. “You really are worried about another kidnapping.” I’ve heard Sahra complain about running too often to assume she’s just doing this for a lark—she much prefers yoga or kickboxing for physical activity.

“An ounce of prevention, as Nightingale would say,” Sahra says lightly, and I snort.

“Yeah, okay.”

Sahra heads up to her room to get changed into her workout clothes, and I sit down to eat a quick bite of toast, hoping it’ll settle my stomach.

The actual jog itself is fine—the wind is brisk, but we move at a good pace, with me hardly having to slow down for Sahra at all. For all of Sahra’s previous complaints when it comes to jogging, she doesn’t whine once we get started, putting her head down and keeping pace with me all the while.

The day itself is beautiful, sun peeking out through the morning clouds, turning the sky a pale blue with hints of pink and gold. A beautiful day, solid company on my jog—everything as perfect as it could be, except for the odd jangling in my brain, the sense of...dislocation. I keep expecting to turn my head and see William next to me instead of Sahra, to feel uneven cobblestones beneath my feet instead of smooth pavement, to smell horses and smog instead of car exhaust and fresh air.

But it’s Sahra jogging next to me, it’s the London of 2018 I’m moving through now, and I’m home at last, everything else is just...a memory I have to move past. Even if I haven’t yet figured out how.


	7. Chapter Seven

The next week is just...normal. No ghosts, no crime scenes, just me trying to settle into a groove and mostly succeeding. 

I spend time in the library brushing up on my Greek, studying next to Abigail and Sahra at the same table and sharing looks with Sahra when Nightingale--or sometimes Abigail--corrects us on our pronunciation. 

“Show-off,” Sahra says to Abigail whenever that happens, but she says it with a smile on her face, and Abigail just preens. 

I’m still not cleared for work, technically--the process of officially declaring me not-dead is slowly moving through the gears of British bureaucracy, so I start up again on the experiments and projects I’ve always had to squeeze in whenever I had time--except all I’ve got now is time. And a willing collaborator in Abigail, who is perfectly happy to spend an afternoon with me setting up controls for my experiments on setting off chipsets with magic. 

Abigail brings out my old notebooks and, a little diffidently, shows me the notes she’s made in the margins. “This is really good,” I say absently, flipping through the pages, and look up just in time to catch Abigail smiling to herself. She catches my eye and the smile is replaced by her usual squint; I just waggle my eyebrows at her and Abigail breaks, snorting with laughter. 

“Right, okay,” I say, grinning openly. “Let’s get started on this before Molly chases us down for dinner.”

So things are good, they’re going just fine. Even if I’m still having nightmares most nights, even if Nightingale and I still haven’t gone anywhere past that one moment in the study, even if Bev and I haven’t talked about where we are now, with our engagement, with the addition of Nightingale to our bed, our relationship, our...everything. It’s not that I don’t think Bev would be willing to have that conversation, it’s just that Bev seems to be operating under the assumption that everything’s going to work itself out, and I...I want to believe she’s right. 

I want so badly to believe she’s right, and sometimes I do--and on the days I can’t, I keep my questions and fears to myself. 

*

Beverley’s going out to patrol early one morning, so I wake up groggily early on a Thursday morning to the sight of Bev zipping up her wetsuit and going, “Shh, you’ll wake Thomas.”

Given that he’s currently wrapped around me like an octopus, it’s a fair warning. I sleepily relax back into the mattress, smiling as Bev drops a kiss on my forehead before slipping out of the room, the door clicking shut behind her. 

I’m still nowhere near wanting to get up yet, and I doze for a while, enjoying the soft bed and the solid warmth of Nightingale behind me, until some subtle combination of clues--a sudden tension in Nightingale’s body, a shift in his breathing--tip me off that something’s wrong. 

Acting on a hunch, I start to twist around to look at him, saying softly, “Thomas? Thomas, wake up.”

Thomas finally wakes up with a jerk, his hand tightening on my arm as he stares blankly at me, his gray eyes wide in his face, before letting out a long, shuddering sigh. 

“Thomas?” I say, worried at the blank shock on his face. 

His hand slides down my arm as Nightingale blinks at me, before saying softly, in a tone of deep relief, “You’re here.”

“Of course,” I say quietly, starting to get an idea of what he must have been dreaming about. “I’m right here.”

Nightingale’s gaze is still moving over my face, as though he’s studying every inch of it. “So you are.”

“Beverley’s on patrol,” I explain. “She warned me against waking you up, but I thought--”

“No, no, I appreciate it,” Nightingale assures me. His fingers are gliding back and forth across my bare arm, but absently, as if he doesn’t realize he’s doing it.

He’s not making a move to get out of the bed, and neither am I. 

I don’t have any sort of plan when I lean in and kiss him on the mouth, soft and lingering. All I can think is that he’s right there in my bed, our bodies still tangled up together beneath the sheets, and that I want to. God, how I want to.

And just like the first time I kissed him, Nightingale freezes momentarily before kissing me back, his fingers resting lightly against my cheek as his mouth moves over mine. It’s slow and tender, right up until it isn’t, as Nightingale pushes me down onto my back, pinning me down to the bed. I groan and unthinkingly arch my body against his, my hardening cock rubbing against his thigh. 

Nightingale’s body is a heavy weight on top of me, and as he pulls back to study my face, I don’t feel confined, I don’t feel as though I’m trapped with no escape, I just feel--secure, treasured and safe, and the thought has heat flooding to my cheeks, and I have to drop my gaze and look away from Nightingale’s searching eyes. 

“Let me look at you, Peter,” Nightingale murmurs in response to this, his voice as close to pleading as I’ve ever heard it. 

“Of course you can,” I tell him, startled, and when Nightingale starts to pull at the hem of my sleep shirt, I move to help him pull it over my head, and Nightingale for once shows no concern for an article of clothing, tossing it carelessly to the floor. 

I give him a grin for this, and Nightingale’s mouth quirks upward, clearly realizing what I’m thinking. The tension doesn’t lift, but it eases enough that I brush another kiss against his mouth, murmuring against his lips, “Look at me all you want.”

He takes me at my word. For what feels like an eternity, Nightingale just sits back on his heels above me, his hands trailing over every inch of my skin, mapping out my body, learning the sinews and lines of my arms and chest and abdomen until every brush of his fingers on my bare skin has me shivering and shaking beneath him. 

“No other scars,” he says softly to himself at one point, his hand trailing over my heart, where the only scar on my body is. His other hand is idly stroking at my cock through my boxers, the touch enough to keep me on the edge without actually getting me off, and it’s the best kind of torment. 

Distracted, I groan out, “Bev noticed that too.”

Nightingale’s eyes flicker back up to my face at this, and I momentarily falter, wondering if this is maybe somehow a bridge too far, mentioning my other romantic partner when I’m about to have sex with him. 

But then Nightingale admits, “Yes, she’d, ah, she’d mentioned the same to me as well.”

I lick at my lips as I take that in. “You’ve been sharing me between the two of you for a while now, haven’t you,” I say slowly. 

Nightingale’s hands go still on my body, and that’s the last thing I wanted to happen. “Is that a problem?”

My heart feels as though it’s clenching in my chest at the unsure note in his voice. “No,” I tell him, and I mean it, I can’t do anything but mean it. “It makes sense, is all. Bev said she could never hold a grudge against someone who loved me.”

Nightingale’s mouth parts at this, his eyes wide and his face so familiar, the handsome lines of it as familiar to me as the back of my own hand, and maybe we were always going to end up here, because it seems impossible right now, to see him looking at me like this and not respond to it. 

He still hasn’t said a word, so I go ahead and blurt the rest of it out. “It’s the same for—for me, if you—“

“I do,” Nightingale says, his voice hoarse and sincere, and I know it’s true, I’ve probably known since the day I returned, Nightingale watching me in that hospital room as I made werelight after werelight, looking at me as though I was a miracle. “Could you ever doubt it?’

“No,” I say, or rather gasp out, because Nightingale has finally started moving his hand on my cock again, a firm grip that feels amazing as my hips stutter up into his fist. “I don’t, I--oh God, don’t stop--”

He doesn’t stop, just keeps going with that ruthlessly firm grip until I come, spilling over his fist and onto my stomach. Nightingale kisses me as I’m still shuddering through it, and then takes his wet hand to his own cock, and I say against his mouth, “No, let me,” and I stroke his cock until he comes all over my stomach, his low gasps the only thing I can hear over the sound of my own heartbeat. 

*

One of the long-term projects my mother has started on, and that I’m helping her with, is the long-overdue digitization of the Folly’s libraries. 

“It will take forever to do this, of course,” Mum explains that afternoon where she ropes me into helping her manually scan the books. “And Thomas isn’t yet convinced of the need to digitize all the books just yet.”

“You’ll bring him around, though,” I say, and my mother just laughs. 

“Of course,” she agrees. “And if I can’t, then you certainly can.”

I look over at her when she says that, but she’s placidly arranging the books on the table, seemingly not meaning anything by that at all. 

I’m not entirely sure about that, but I leave it alone for now. And soon enough, I fall into the rhythm of carefully scanning the books two pages at a time, my mum keeping me on task when I’m about to get distracted by an interesting passage or two. Thankfully we’ve got music playing in the background, some classic Nina Simone, and Mum’s talking about her plans for going to the goblin market--in a search for good deals and community engagement with the demi-monde--on Sunday after church, when her phone rings in her pocket.

It’s not that I mean to listen in to my mother’s phone conversation, it’s just that the warmth in her voice as she says, “Hello,” catches my ear, and when I look up, she’s smiling at whatever the other person is saying. 

I get a whiff of suspicion at that, and as my mum blithely continues talking about her plans for the week--she shoots me a look as she talks about digitizing the books with me and lowers her voice as though I’m not _right here_ \--I start to become more and more convinced that I’m right. 

And then my mum says, “Sunday? Well, I am going to the goblin market, but if you’re free...” and I’m _sure_ that I’m right. 

I’m polite about it, I wait until she’s said her goodbyes and hung up before I ask, very casually, “Was that Inspector Seawoll?”

My mother glances up sharply at that--I’m not sure why, as it’s not as if she was subtle--before saying, in an equally casual way, “It was, actually.”

Of course, now that I’ve brought it up, I have no idea what to say next. “That’s, er, that’s nice,” I say awkwardly. 

“Mm,” Mumr says, still watching me closely. “We might be going together to the goblin market on Sunday after church, actually.”

That brings me up short. “Wait, really? He’s agreed to that?” At her nod, I whistle and say, without thinking, “Wow, he must really like you.”

There’s a beat of awkward silence, and then both of us start to speak at the same time. 

“I--”

“Do you--” 

I gesture at her to continue, and she visibly takes a breath before asking me, “Does it bother you?”

I pause before answering, surprised at the question. Mum just looks back at me, trying to look as impassive as ever but I can tell that the question matters to her. Well, of course it matters, she asked it in the first place, and my mother isn’t the sort to bother with unnecessary questions. 

So the only thing left to do is answer her. 

The truth is that even if I did have an issue with my mother being...courted by Seawoll, I wouldn’t say anything. Not just because it’s not my business, but because so much of my mum’s life had been built around saving my dad from his own self-destructive tendencies, so much so that in the wake of his death, she’d walked around for months afterwards with a lost, blank look on her face, not knowing what to do with herself. 

She doesn’t look like that anymore. And I’m not a fool, I know a big part of my mother’s joy is that I’m back. But I don’t think I’m wrong in also believing that part of it is her new life here, running the Folly’s libraries and bossing us all about, sharing recipes with Molly and gossiping with Elsie Winstanley on weekends. And if part of her new life involves Seawoll, as strange as that is, well. 

“It’s a little weird for me,” I admit, very carefully. “But that doesn’t mean I think it’s _bad_.” My mum is still watching me, and the hope in her eyes feels familiar, it feels like the way I felt when I was introducing her to Bev as my girlfriend officially. “I like seeing you happy, so no, it doesn’t bother me.”

My mother looks at me for a long moment, then, to my surprise, she leans in and kisses my cheek. “You’re a good son,” she tells me, and I feel my face heating up, even as I smile. 

“I think you should come with us on Sunday,” she continues, and I blink at that. 

“You...want me to be a third-wheel on your date?” I ask, doubtfully. 

Mum waves a hand at this. “I want you to get to know Alex properly,” she says in a firm voice, and I can already tell there’s no way I’m getting out of this now. “Instead of thinking of him just as some big shouty Northern man.”

“He _is_ a big shouty Northern man,” I point out, very reasonably I think, but she just rolls her eyes at me. 

“Yes, but he has layers,” she insists. I open my mouth to reply, but she continues, “Peter, I want you to do this for me.”

“Okay,” I say, because really, I’ve done harder things for my mum before, and it’s the least of what I owe her. “I’ll come with you on Sunday.”

*

“It’s very sweet of you to go,” Beverley says, lounging on the bed and grinning as she watches me get dressed that Sunday for my afternoon outing with my mother and Seawoll. 

“It’s going to be awkward as fuck,” I tell her, tugging a jumper over my head. “I’m going to be the third-wheel on my mum’s _date_. With Inspector Seawoll, of all people.”

“Is it Seawoll in particular that’s freaking you out, or just that your mum’s dating at all?” Beverley asks, with her knack of getting to the heart of the issue. 

I pause before admitting, “Little bit of Column A, little bit of Column B.” Beverley’s looking at me with no judgment on her face, and I continue, “But she’s my mum, and I want her to be happy, so I can get used to it, somehow.”

Beverley’s watching me with a tiny smile on her face. “Look at you, articulating your emotions.”

“Ugh, don’t start.”

“I’m not!” Beverley protests, getting off the bed and walking over to me. “Promise.”

She reaches out and starts adjusting my jumper, tugging at the hem and the shoulders until it’s lying just right. This is a very obvious tell of hers, so I hold myself still and wait her out. 

Honestly, I’m surprised she hasn’t come right out and demanded that she accompany me tonight. Then I wonder if the reason she isn’t is because after what happened with Fournier, she and Nightingale know full well there’s no one left in London dangerous enough--or suicidal enough--to go up against them now. 

It’s an unpleasant thought, and I shy away from it. 

“You’re going to be careful today, right?” Beverley asks, not quite looking me in the face as she says it. 

“Of course I am,” I promise, and pause only momentarily before offering, “You’re more than welcome to come with us, if you like.”

Beverley shakes her head. “I’ve got patrol again today, and I promised Effra I’d come over for dinner afterwards. Besides, I wouldn’t want to get in the way of you interrogating Seawoll as to his...intentions.”

“I’m not going to do that,” I protest. “One, my mum would kill me if I tried it, and two, I don’t need to interrogate him, all I need to do is invite him over for tea one day and let Molly put the fear of God into him.”

Beverley bursts out laughing at that, but she doesn’t argue, which only proves my point.

*

Truthfully, part of the reason I'm so calm about the idea of an afternoon out with my mother and Seawoll at the goblin market is because I still can't really believe that Inspector Seawoll is willing to go. Part of me--okay, most of me--is fully convinced that at the last minute, there will be some conflict, some case or meeting that's come up, and it won't actually happen after all. Because who would believe that Seawoll would willingly go into a goblin market in his free time? Even if he is...courting my mum, as Nightingale keeps putting it, despite all the faces I make when he does. 

I keep thinking this right up until 2pm on Sunday afternoon, when right on the dot the doorbell rings, and it's Seawoll on the front steps, wearing civilian clothes and looking very strange in them, at least to my eyes. For fuck's sake, he's wearing jeans.

"Peter," Seawoll says, aiming for his usual brisk manner and only somewhat succeeding. "You look well. Are you going to let me in?"

"Yeah, of course," I say, stepping aside. "Come on in, s--" I just barely cut myself off from adding a 'sir' to the end of that sentence, and Seawoll squints at me like he knows what I was going to say. 

Oh yeah, I think to myself as I shut the door behind him. Today is going to go just great. 

*

But for all my pessimism, it doesn't start out that badly. Mostly because my mother takes firm control of the proceedings from the minute she appears, quickly ushering us into the Asbo she will be driving us in to this month's goblin market. 

I frankly should've known my mum would have the conversation well in hand, because she opens it up with a question about Seawoll's upcoming trip to attend the Manchester football derby in early April. 

"Oh, which team are you supporting then?" I ask, and only partly because my mum is giving me a significant look from the rearview mirror. 

Seawoll snorts from the passenger seat. "City, obviously," he says. 

"Peter is a Spurs fan," my mother offers. 

"A casual one," I insist, and my mother snorts at this. "Well, it's not like I've been able to keep up with them the last few seasons really. And apparently it hasn't been much of a title race at all this year, from what I gathered."

"Yeah, it's been a good year for us," Seawoll says smugly. "It'll be even sweeter if we can wrap up the title at Old Trafford when I'm there."

"Yes, it's remarkable what millions and millions of oil money will get you," my mother says in a faux-innocent tone. As I stifle my laughter, she and Seawoll immediately start bickering away happily about football--Seawoll as the die-hard Manchester City fan, and my mother in the role of supposed neutral who just enjoys the sport. 

At least until I blow her cover. "Don't let her fool you," I say, grinning. "She's had a soft spot for Liverpool since the days when John Barnes was playing."

"Peter!" my mother protests, but Seawoll just lets out a bark of laughter. "Oh, I knew it."

The ensuing debate lasts the entire drive up to Lambeth, where we all end up finally agreeing that no matter our footballing allegiances, we can all agree that Jose Mourinho is the fucking worst. 

Despite the fact that I haven't been to the goblin market in Lambeth the sight of the building (an abandoned Italian restaurant) seems incredibly familiar, right down to the arrow drawn on the cardboard sign, which is already bent at one corner.

I see Seawoll scanning the building and I offer, helpfully, "It's really just like any other flea market in London. Just with slightly, ah, more unusual clientele."

Seawoll snorts at this. "Unusual, he says. This from the wizard who literally came back from the dead less than a month ago." He does take his eyes off the building to point my mother in the direction of a parking space, however. 

*

The first sign I get of the welcome I'm in store for is when the guy at the door (white, mid-twenties, with a truly impressive ginger beard) gapes at me as he answers, so blatantly that my mother has to repeat the password twice before he notices her. 

"Right, sorry," he says quickly, but his eyes keep sliding back to me. "Er, no weapons, no glamours, no trouble, yeah?"

"We'll try to manage," I offer up, smiling, but reconsider when he shoots me an alarmed look--which is probably fair, given my history, even if the majority of those events were clearly outside of my control. 

"What he means to say is that there'll be no problem," Seawoll says, and I don't need to look at him to hear him rolling his eyes. 

"Right," the man says faintly. "Erm, if you'll all come right this way.”

So that’s fun, and it’s even worse once we actually make it inside, as a definite hush falls over the area closest to us, and ripples out through the crowd as more and more people catch sight of me. Just as I’m starting to wonder if this was perhaps such a good idea, my mother calls out, “Terrance!” and leads us over to a nearby stall, where a mixed-race middle-aged man is selling various ceramics. I discreetly run a finger along the rim of a bowl, but can’t pick up any vestigia in particular. 

Terrance, it turns out, emigrated from Jamaica with the Windrush generation decades ago, and praises my mum to the skies for connecting him to someone at the Home Office so that he could finally get his immigration issues sorted out. 

“So this is the starling, eh?” he says to me, smiling. “You look just like your mother.”

“So I’ve been told,” I say, smiling back and relieved to have one person not gaping at me as though I’m an alien. “But she’s far better-looking.”

Terrance laughs while my mother just rolls her eyes at me. “Go and find something to do,” she tells. “You can pick out some presents for Beverley and Thomas while you’re here.” I jerk my gaze to her at that, but she just quirks an eyebrow at me. 

Oh God, I’m definitely not ready to deal with that. 

“Alex,” my mother says, turning to Seawoll, “you should go with him, make sure he doesn’t get into trouble again.”

Seawoll looks amused by this but agrees, and Mum, pleased by everyone settling into the jobs she’s assigned them, gets back to cheerfully haggling away with Terrance. 

A little at a loss for what to do next, and very aware of the eyes still on me, I look at Seawoll who just lifts his eyebrows at me. “You heard your mother. Go find some stuff to buy and try to keep from bringing the place down around our ears.”

“To be clear,” I say, heading towards a stall that’s selling jewelry, one that’s close enough to allow me to keep an eye on my mum, “I’m not the one actually _causing_ the property damage during those cases.”

“No,” Seawoll agrees, dry as dust. “Sometimes it’s your boss or your girlfriend wrecking buildings left and right.”

One of the necklaces on a stand catches my eye, dark blue beads strung on a gold chain. I carefully pick it up and let it run through my fingers, but I don’t notice any _vestigia,_ and it seems safe enough. Plus the necklace is exactly Beverley’s style, and while I’m still absolutely not thinking about where my mother’s suggestion came from, it’s not a bad one on the whole. 

I look up at the man managing the stall and I smile in my most friendly way. “How much?”

“Oh, it’s on the house,” the man says quickly, eyes a little too wide. 

Both Seawoll and I stare at him. Before I can reassure him that no, really, I don’t mind paying, Seawoll says thoughtfully, “Do you know, that could be considered a bribe.”

“You aren’t helping,” I tell him, and Seawoll just shrugs, but he’s also smirking. 

I spend a good fifteen minutes slowly _raising_ the price to something actually reasonable before finally purchasing it, and I wait before we’re out of earshot before saying very quietly, “What the hell?”

“Just think, son,” Seawoll says, snickering to himself. “You’re never going to buy a pint for yourself again, and all you had to do was vanish for a year.”

I give him another look, and say, “You know, I thought you were nicer now.”

Seawoll just smirks at me. “Now where did you get a silly idea like that?”

I didn’t plan to get into this today, but it’s frankly too good of an opportunity to waste. “You have been though,” I say slowly. “Having meals at the Folly, supporting Sahra’s apprenticeship and all that.”

“You think that’s me being nicer?” Seawoll asks, with a sardonic look. “Son, this is me being _practical_. After that last inquiry I realized we weren’t getting rid of Nightingale ever, and with you out of the picture, all the other alternatives were somehow worse, God help us all. The last year’s been about trying to minimize the fallout, that’s all.” He scowls and adds, “Even if I have to give up my most promising sergeant just so she can keep your boss and your fiancée from running around London like a pair of demented vigilantes.”

“Is it all practicality?” I ask, and Seawoll’s gaze slides towards my mother, still deep in negotiation with Terrance. 

“No,” he concedes, with a look on his face that tells me whatever this thing he has going with my mum is, it’s not ending anytime soon. “No, it’s not.” He eyes me up and asks, “That a problem?”

“So long as you treat her well, it’s not,” I tell him, and I mean it. 

“Fair enough,” Seawoll nods, and looks around him. “Right, where are we going next?”

Where we end up heading is to a bookseller, where a white woman with pink streaks in her dark hair smiles at us hopefully. “Hello, anything you’re looking for in particular?”

“Just browsing,” I say. There’s a battered copy of Polidari’s writings that I skip over, but buried halfway down a stack of books is a copy of _Winnie ille Pu_ , or Winnie the Pooh: a Latin translation.

“Oh, brilliant,” I say softly as I look it over. I’ve never been a huge Pooh fan, personally, but I can just see Nightingale chuckling as he reads it, and it seems suddenly perfect. “How much for this? And please don’t say it’s on the house.”

The woman laughs, thank God, and says in a strong Geordie accent, “No, don’t want to be accused of bribing anyone,” with a wink at Seawoll. 

Her name is Candace, it turns out, and she’s been a devoted follower of Molly’s on Twitter and Instagram for several years now--I take note of her Twitter username, promising to send Molly her regards, and Candace’s entire face just lights up in a giant grin. 

My mother comes over to meet us, immediately handing Seawoll her bag of carefully packed dishware, and inspects my would-be purchase carefully. “Good choice,” she decrees at last, and I roll my eyes. 

“Glad you approve,” I say, and introduce her to Candace, who shakes my mother’s hand eagerly. 

“I think I had some of your cooking at the open house a few years back, it was delicious,” Candace says, and asks, “Are you going to have the open house again this year? At the boarding school, I mean.”

“I don’t see why not,” I say without thinking, and only then do I see my mother grimace. Candace winces too, realizing she’s somehow stepped in it. 

“You didn’t have Casterbrook last year?” I ask, surprised, and my mother just stares at me. 

“Of course we didn’t,” she says, pointedly. “It wouldn’t have been the same, and none of us could face trying, not then. And Thomas--” she pauses, but continues determinedly, “Thomas wasn’t ready to put your name up on the wall. He offered, but it would have been...too much. For him, for all of us.”

Despite myself, I shiver at thinking of it, at the thought of Nightingale grimly carving Peter Grant--March 2017 at the end of that long, long list of the dead, just in the same way that I shiver every time I think of the marker in the cemetery next to my dad’s gravestone with my name on it, the only memorial anyone could put up with my body still missing. 

But I’m in public, and my mother’s watching me, as are Seawoll and Candace, so I put a smile on my face and say, “Well, we’re planning on having one this year.”

Candace beams, and Mum and Seawoll both relax. “Brilliant,” Candace says happily. “I can get more of your cook’s pastries then.”

*

Like any time I go shopping with my mother, we spend hours at the market going through stalls, hunting out deals. I'm impressed by how many people my mum greets by name, who turn to her with smiles on their faces and queries about her health, or with thanks for a recipe she's passed on. 

And even though both Seawoll and I are warrant card-carrying members of the Filth, that glow of goodwill gets reflected back on us, as I'm making polite small talk with sellers who I'm pretty sure would've run for cover had they seen me approaching a year ago. Even Seawoll seems to be relaxing and enjoying himself, carrying my mum's bags without complaint and no longer eying up the merchandise like it's about to literally get up and walk away. 

It's a lovely afternoon, and my mum is happy--and to my surprise, so am I. 

Finally Mum has hunted down all the bargains she could want for an afternoon's worth of shopping, and once I verify she's not bringing any cursed objects back with her, we make our way upstairs to the makeshift pub to have a pint or two before heading back. 

I'd like to say that I spotted her right away. But it's Seawoll who sees her first, coming back with our second round of drinks with a determinedly blank face and a tension to his jaw. 

He bends over the table to set the drinks down and says to me in a low voice out of the side of his mouth, "IC1 female with brown hair, two tables down from us. Tap your fingers twice if it's her, once if it's not."

My body seizes up at hearing this, because there is only one 'her' that Seawoll can be referring to. 

But with a suddenly dry throat, I look to where Seawoll has indicated she is. 

At first glance, there's something only vaguely familiar about her. Long straight brown hair the color of sand, a thick fringe cut across her forehead that's not particularly flattering, with a brown turtleneck and dark green trousers that don't quite seem to fit right. It's not the face or the hair that's familiar, but the _attitude_ , the assured tilt of the jaw, the steady gaze fixed right on me--

Mouth still dry, I tap my fingers twice on the tabletop, as Lesley May’s mouth curves into a faint smile as she watches me. 

My mother, no fool, looks between us and the strange (to her) white woman watching her table, and asks in a low undertone, “Who--” but she falls silent as I grab her hand underneath the table, eyes going wide with alarm as the penny drops. 

“Fuck,” Seawoll says, low and furious. “She knows we’ve spotted her?”

“Oh yeah,” I confirm, my heart pounding dully in my ears as Lesley keeps watching us, lifting up her pint glass in an ironic toast our way. “Definitely.”

Underneath the table, my mother is holding onto my hand with a death grip, and when I turn to look into her face, I can tell she already knows what I’m going to say. 

“Mum--”

“No,” she replies, immediate and furious. “Peter, _no_.”

“Mum, I need you and Alex to get out of here,” I say, glancing at Seawoll, who looks grim but unsurprised. “Once you two are in the car, I need you to get--” Nightingale. Beverley. “Backup.”

“And leave you here with her?” Mum hisses through her teeth. 

I swallow. For one shameful moment, I think of what it would be like, to simply get up with my mother and Seawoll and leave this behind, leave this mess for someone else to clean up, and walk away to the safety of the Folly, where nothing will ever touch me again. 

I think of that possibility, and I want it, even as I think of what it would be like, having Seawoll bear witness to my cowardice, telling Sahra that I let Lesley get away, admitting to Nightingale and Beverley that my year of captivity ruined me, perhaps for good. 

But even as I think of leaving, I’m rooted to my chair, and I know that when I get my mother out of this building, I won’t be leaving with her. “Mum. I can’t do my job with you here, okay?” 

As her mouth trembles, I do what I wish I could’ve done a year ago, and kiss her on the cheek, murmuring softly, “It’ll be okay. I love you.”

“Rose,” Seawoll says, his voice gentler than I would’ve dreamed possible, coming from him. “Let’s go so we can call in the calvary, okay?”

For one awful moment I’m afraid she’ll refuse, but then my mum looks at me and says, fiercely, “Don’t you _dare_ do anything stupid.”

As she’s slowly getting to her feet, Seawoll keeps a guiding hand on her elbow and says in a low aside to me, “You heard your mother. No stupid heroics today, you understand me? Consider that a direct fucking order, Grant.”

“Yes, sir,” I say, nodding, and Seawoll gives me one last look before wrapping his arm around my mum’s shoulders and ushering her out of there as quickly as possible. I think I see him send a glare Lesley’s way, but I can’t be sure.

I’m dimly aware that we’re gathering attention, that the patrons still there are watching me warily. As I slowly get to my feet and walk towards her table, the smarter patrons make a break for it, exiting hastily. 

Lesley looks unbothered as I stand in front of her, not yet taking the open seat at her table. I don’t think she’d have had time to booby-trap anything, frankly, but it never hurts to be careful. 

I gesture at her face. “You might as well take the disguise off, there’s no point anymore.”

Lesley shrugs. “Fair enough,” she concedes, and with no more fanfare than that, her face ripples and twists, transforming from the face of a stranger to Lesley’s real face once more. Over the rushing noise in my ears, I can hear the low gasps as the few people still left see what’s happening, the hasty footsteps of people who have decided right, don’t actually want to be here for whatever the fuck this is. 

Lesley pulls off her wig, hairpins falling down as she does, and grimaces. “You know, no one talks about how hot wigs are.”

I could’ve told her that, from a childhood listening to my mum and aunties talk about their hair, both the type that grew out of their head and the hair they bought from a store, but I keep quiet. 

Lesley looks me over. “You look good for a dead man, Peter.”

“I wasn’t dead, I was trapped,” I reply.

Lesley nods at the empty chair opposite her. “Aren’t you going to sit down?” I don’t move, and Lesley rolls her eyes at me. “For heaven’s sake, Peter, when would I have had the time to set up a trap? Try to think for a minute.”

I don't want to sit in that chair. And after a moment of waffling, I decide not to. "Nah, I'm good here," I say, folding my arms. 

Lesley blinks, momentarily surprised. "What, you just going to stand here and glower at me?" I don't move, and her mouth thins as she realizes that I do in fact intend to do just that. 

"What the fuck are you doing, Lesley?" I ask at last. 

A muscle works in Lesley's jaw. For a second I wonder if the mask has slipped at last, if I'm no longer looking at Lesley May, would-be real-life version of Anakin Skywalker after he took a walk on the dark side, but just Lesley again, regular Lesley. "A year ago,” she tells me, “I woke up in a hospital bed with a hole in my side, and Lady Ty was there, and she told me that you were dead, and that if I didn’t find a way to get out of the country, there would be another funeral very soon, and she would personally save her sister the trouble of arranging it. So I left--and a year later, I hear that the starling has miraculously returned from the dead. So I came home.” She lifts her chin up as she finishes, “I came home, and I wanted to see you.”

"What for?" I ask. 

Lesley stares at me as though I'm completely mad. "What for--Peter, I thought you'd _died_. They had a funeral, for fuck's sake."

"Yeah, because your boss went and tried to kill me, and then your _other_ boss took me to an alternate universe and stuck a spear through my chest and pinned me to a bridge," I say emphatically, and it might be my imagination, but Lesley seems to go a little paler at my words. "Did you honestly think that you could stop either one of them from coming after me?"

That gets her attention, and Lesley just scowls at me. "I could have," she insists. "If you hadn't been so stupid and had just stayed out of it like I told you--"

"Fine copper I'd be, letting terrorists run around unchecked simply because one of them still thinks we're mates," I tell her. "Stop _lying_ , Lesley. You knew full well I'd never stay out of it, and you went ahead and you kept working with Chorley, despite everything he's done, all the people he's killed--"

"It's funny hearing you talk," Lesley says, face still pale but her mouth twisted up into a sneer. "Given what _your_ boss and _your_ girlfriend did to Fournier and his accomplices. Or did you think I didn't know about that? Tell me, Peter, where exactly in the rules does it allow for crushing a man's heart in his chest before even giving him the caution?"

That hits, exactly as Lesley expects it to, and she presses the advantage, because it's exactly what Lesley does, every time. 

"That's right, isn't it," she says. "Nightingale and Beverley weren't thinking about the rules, they weren't following the law, they were just trying to show that they had the most power of anyone in the city. Because that's all there is, Peter--there aren't rules, there's no order, there is just _power_ , and the people that have it keeping control over the ones that don't."

I wonder what Nightingale would say to this. Or Beverley. But I know what the answer is--nothing. 

They'd have already moved to take Lesley down the second they recognized her. Without hesitation. 

But as I look at Lesley, I have this moment of perfect clarity, where I know exactly what the truth is and what I have to do next. That sort of brilliant, painful clarity has only come to me a handful of times in my life--in a field in Herefordshire, for instance, looking at the people I knew I had to save, and knowing exactly how I was going to do it. 

“If that’s what you believe, if that’s how you see the world,” I say, feeling something click into place as I speak, “then you would’ve never been a good copper.”

I don’t say it to hurt her. I say it because it’s _true_ , and I’m only just now now admitting it, to her and to myself, after years of comparing myself to Lesley May, the best of my generation. Forcing myself to think of her as Lesley-before-Punch, and Lesley-after-Punch, but maybe there’s only ever been Lesley, and the choices we both made to end up where we are now. 

Lesley’s face goes very pale, and then she says, in a voice that is almost steady, “You know...I was so happy when I heard you weren’t dead. I really was.”

The worst part is that I believe her. 

“Are you going to come in with me quietly?” I ask. “Or will you make it difficult?”

Lesley actually laughs a little, tilting her head at me in a close approximation of her usual confidence. “Oh, Peter. Come on now.”

And then she flings a plate at me. 

I’d sensed her forming the magic before she’d actually done it, so I got my shield up just in time, the plate shattering against it, shards of ceramic flying everywhere.

I push the table forward, knocking her off her feet as I form a water bomb and aim it for her head, but Lesley ducks and it splashes harmlessly on the floor behind her. 

From there it’s a proper duel, with the two of throwing the figurative sink at each other. It’s all so fast that I don’t have time to think about anything but the next spell, the next move, trying my best to anticipate what Lesley will do next and knowing she’s trying to do the same for me. 

I’m ducking and weaving, feeling the sweat beading along my forehead and trickling down my back, dropping down low as a pint glass weaves crazily through the air--low blow, that--when I spot my chance. 

Lesley’s in front of the pub’s back wall, and I feint right with a quick _impello_ that she easily avoids, before hitting her dead in the face with a water bomb. As she’s choking and spluttering, I hit her with _impello_ for real this time, pushing her backwards until she’s pinned to the wall, and then I use a variation on the shield _forma_ to keep her there. 

I’ve got her dead to rights, and from the spark of fear on Lesley’s face, she knows it as well as I do. 

The caution is right there on the tip of my tongue, but I hesitate, just for a single second, but it’s enough. 

Enough time for Lesley to send a heavy, wooden chair slamming right into the side of my chest, crashing straight into my ribs and knocking me down to the ground. 

For a second, as I feel and hear my ribs break in my chest, I’m too stunned to think anything but oh God, please no--and then the pain hits, and I can’t think of anything at all, all I can do is suck in pained gasps of air that grow shallower and thinner with each wavering breath. 

Over my agonized breathing, over my heart pounding in terror, I hear Lesley’s footsteps as she approaches, and then the sound of her running off. 

It fucking figures. 

I don’t know how long I’m down on the ground before Seawoll comes back, his heavy thudding steps quicker than I’ve ever heard them, but then I hear him go, “Oh Christ,” and then through my blurred vision, I see him kneeling over me, putting a comforting hand on my shoulder as he talks into his mobile, but I can’t hear what he’s saying, because I’m back on that bridge with a spear in my chest, choking on my own blood as Punch cackles in my ear--

“Please,” I gasp out, blood bubbling over my lips, the metallic taste making my stomach roil, “Help me--”

“Help is on the way, son,” Seawoll says, his grip tight on my shoulder as he moves my body into the recovery position. But even as he’s promising that I’ll be fine, that the ambulance is on the way, that my mum is safe, I can barely hear him, because my head is still on that bridge, or down on the floor in front of Lesley May, I’m still tasting my own blood and hearing the gruesome noise of my ribs breaking, again and again. 

*

By the time that we finally arrive at UCH, I'm a fucking wreck. 

Part of it, of course, is the broken ribs and collapsed lung, which thanks to the horrendous London traffic and my increasingly labored and thin breathing, the paramedics could no longer in good conscience wait to treat, and had to resolve by jamming a monster of a needle in between my ribs and sucking out the excess air, without the benefit of any painkillers whatsoever. Credit to the poor paramedic who did it though, who not only had to deal with me yelping in pain, but Seawoll indignantly demanding just what the fuck they were playing at. (He'd bellowed his way into the back of the ambulance with me when the paramedics had arrived.)

But part of it is just me, and whatever fucked-up disaster is happening in my brain. Even knowing that I should be able to breathe easier at last, even knowing that help is here, I just can't fucking calm down. 

Even once I'm wheeled into A&E the pressure in my chest is still there, I'm still taking giant gulps of air and feeling like there's no oxygen in the room, as Seawoll looks me over with increasing concern from the corner where he's talking quietly into his mobile. 

"Now, Peter, are you still feeling that pressure in your chest?"

"Yes," I gasp out, squeezing my eyes shut. 

"I'd like you to take a deep, slow breath for me, all right--"

"I can't do it," I say, and to my horror, I feel tears starting to prick at my eyes, fucking hell. "I can't, I can't, there's something _wrong_ \--"

“That’s perfectly fine,” the doctor assures me soothingly. “Listen, I’m just going to give you something to help you relax and breathe a little easier, just a mild sedative--”

 

“No,” I say, jerking away from her and hissing when that makes my ribs flare with pain. “No, no sedatives, I can’t risk it, I can’t--” I can feel myself spiralling as I say it, the panic only getting worse as I see the doctor and the nurse exchanging glances, and then the nurse stepping away to go get the drugs that’ll leave me here, stoned and helpless and frantically, I think of the forma that will get me away the fastest, impello to keep them away, and then the spell to bring down the wall--

But Seawoll steps forward, clearing his throat and saying deliberately, “Peter, look at me. Look at me.”

And somehow, through the fog in my head, I do. 

“There is nothing coming for you,” Seawoll says. “Not here, not again.”

I start to shake my head no, because there is, there _always_ is, but Seawoll’s face only grows more determined and he says, emphatic, “Trust me when I say this, son--through no fault of your own, you can’t think clearly right now. I can, and I’m telling you--you’ve got to get some rest, and do as the doctors tell you, yeah?”

I look at him, then I look to the ordinary doctor and to the ordinary nurse, here in these ordinary hospital walls with not a trace of vestigia or magic to be found, and feel myself start to shake a little, my throat tightening as I realize the truth. “Oh God,” I say distantly, my vision starting to blur a little from the tears. 

“Peter, it’s all right.”

“No, it’s not,” I tell them, because it isn’t all right, because I don’t feel all right, because the city is dangerous and the knowledge in my head is dangerous and _I’m_ dangerous, because if I’m so unfit that I can’t tell the difference between help and a legitimate threat--

“I’m going to give you the sedative now, all right?” the doctor tells me, and even though it’s not really an option, I close my eyes and nod. 

I hear Seawoll sigh in relief, and I open my eyes and look at him. My voice is hoarse when I ask, “Don’t let anyone come in to see me. Not--not anyone from the Folly, not like this.”

Seawoll’s eyebrows come together, and he looks ready to protest, but something stops him, and he just nods sharply and says, “All right.”

“Okay,” I say, and I watch as the sedative is inserted into my IV, and I wait for the fog to reach me at last. 

*

Seawoll is as good as his word. I've got no idea how he manages it, but between the x-rays and exams, the only people I see are the doctors and nurses assigned to me. 

By the time that Dr. Walid appears, I’ve been drugged with enough painkillers to fell a horse, and I blearily raise a hand as he enters my room with a faint smile. 

“How are you feeling, Peter?”

“Very, very stoned,” I tell him slowly. 

Dr. Walid smiles a little at this. “Enjoy it while you can, you’ll be feeling those ribs for a while.” He pauses, and then says, “Have you been told how long you’ll need to stay here?”

“It’s five days, isn’t it?” I ask. “What with the--” I point vaguely in the direction of the chest tube. 

“Yes, that’s right, five days to a week,” Dr. Walid says, nodding firmly. The light catches off the rim of his glasses, and I watch in dazed fascination before a thought occurs to me. 

“God, my mum’s going to be cooking up a storm to make sure I don’t eat any hospital food,” I say. I lick my lips and ask, more carefully, “Is she…”

“She’s in the waiting room,” Dr. Walid confirms gently. “Along with all your other friends and family.”

“Oh,” I say, and don’t add anything else. 

Dr. Walid looks at me carefully for a moment, then sits down in a chair next to the hospital bed. “Peter,” he says, “How have you been managing, since you returned?”

“Oh fine,” I say lightly. “Aside from the nightmares, and sleepwalking in the middle of the night to meet the ghost of a river god, and getting my arse kicked by--” I cut myself off at that, and ask tightly, “Did they catch her?”

“No, Lesley got away,” Dr. Walid says with distaste. “That trick with her face--very difficult to combat.” He shakes his head. “But we were talking about you, not Lesley. You mentioned having nightmares?”

I swallow. “Sometimes.”

Dr. Walid waits, and when I don’t elaborate, he smiles faintly. “Do you know, of all the things you’ve accomplished, one of the most impressive might have been convincing Thomas Nightingale that it simply wasn’t possible for him to manage everything on his own.” Dr. Walid tilts his head and says, very gently, “Don’t be foolish enough to ignore your own good advice, Peter.”

I’m currently as high as a kite, those words should have no business hitting me so deeply. I have to swallow twice before I tell him, “I’m not...the last year was the hard part. Coming back, being home—this is supposed to be easy.”

“Peter,” Dr. Walid says, his tired eyes full of compassion. “It’s just a different sort of journey, that’s all.”

I close my mouth on the first response I want to make, which is that I’m tired of journeys, thank you very much. But he must see it in my face, because Dr. Walid just smiles and says, “You’ll get there, Peter, don’t you worry over that.” He pauses briefly before adding, “But you might need some help along the way. Are you open to it?”

There’s a reflex for me to play the tough man, the grizzled detective that drowns his sorrows in booze and song--except that I’ve never been that man, and I don’t particularly want to be. 

“Yeah,” I say, clearing my throat. “Yeah, I am.”

*

Visitors start trickling in after that. My mum and Abigail come in first, hugging me carefully and asking how I feel. I promise them that I feel fine and say in a low voice to my mum, “Didn’t mean to ruin the afternoon.”

“Hush,” my mum says, stroking my hair in the way I remember from when I was very small and sick with the flu. “Hush, Peter, it’s all right.”

“The only person who ruined anything was Lesley,” Abigail says darkly. “DPS is going to be all over us after this--they’ve already cornered Nightingale and Bev.”

“They’ll be coming later to see you,” my mum tells me, a question disguised as a statement, and I just nod. 

“That’s good,” I say, and Mum and Abigail both visibly relax at hearing that. Abigail carefully perches herself on the edge of the bed and asks me, “Did Lesley tell you why she came back?”

“She, ah...she said I was happy to hear that I wasn’t dead,” I say, briefly. 

Abigail stares at me, and then says bluntly, “Well, she’s got a really fucking weird way of showing it.”

Lying there in my hospital bed, with my busted ribs and punctured lung, I laugh without thinking and then raise a hand to my aching chest. “You aren’t wrong,” I say. “You...really aren’t wrong.”

“If that wretched girl has any sense, she’ll leave the city immediately and not come back,” my mother says, her voice grim. 

“If she had any sense she wouldn’t have come back at all,” Abigail says, scowling. 

“It’s Lesley,” I say. “She’s not scared of much.”

“Well, she damn well should be,” Mumsays, very firmly, and I think of Beverley, Nightingale, the full weight of the DPS and the Met, even Lady Ty if Lesley’s to be believed--

“Yeah,” I say softly. “Yeah, maybe.”

Mum takes one look at my face and very firmly changes the subject to how she’ll be coming back later with food from the Folly and how I am under no circumstances to eat the hospital food on offer, as it’s likely full of e-coli or botulism or some other wretched virus that’ll lay waste to my digestive system. It’s a rant I’ve heard from her a dozen times over, but when the alternative is discussing Lesley May and her long list of enemies, I’ll take it any day of the week.

*

When I open my eyes into the darkness, it takes me a long moment to remember where I am. Before I remember, I reach out with my hand to find Nightingale, or Beverley, and when I only find cool sheets and the edge of a much smaller bed, my sleep-addled brain flails about in confusion for a moment before I remember where I am, and what happened. 

Lesley. The ambulance ride to UCH. My ribs, fuck. “Shit,” I whisper, lifting a hand to my ribs, and then I hear someone stir. 

“Peter?” Nightingale asks sleepily from, as I turn, my eyes adjusting to the darkness, where he’s sitting in a chair by my bed. Beverley’s in a chair next to him, curled up into a ball as she sleeps soundly. 

“Hi,” I say dumbly. Nightingale’s jacket is carefully draped over his chair and he looks tired and drained, his hair and clothes rumpled.

“Hello,” Nightingale says. He looks like he wants to say more, but instead he turns to Beverley and gently shakes her shoulder, saying, “Beverley, he’s awake.”

Beverley stirs awake, blinking around dazedly before she turns to me, a smile appearing on her face. “Peter. How are you feeling, babes?”

“Not too bad for a guy who took a chair to the chest,” I say, dryly, and both of them grimace. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” Beverley tells me. It might be the late hour, or the fact that she’s been sleeping in a chair all evening, but she looks almost as subdued as Nightingale, her mouth weary.

“Are you guys all right?”

It’s almost funny, how Nightingale and Beverley have the same disbelieving expression on their faces. “You’re asking us that after you landed in the hospital with broken ribs and a punctured lung?” 

“Not punctured, just collapsed,” I correct, and Beverley just glares at me. “I just mean--you didn’t have any difficulties with the DPS, did you?”

“Very little, given the circumstances,” Nightingale concedes. “We have, however, been barred completely from Operation Carthorse, or from searching for Lesley on our own.”

“You’re going to stick to that, right?” I say worriedly, because the thin line of Beverley’s mouth is worrying me. “I know you’re both ready to tear apart anyone that even looks at me funny, but that’s not--”

I stop talking, realizing too late that the painkillers haven’t worn off and are making me more brutally honest than I would normally choose to be. 

The lighting is dim, but I can make out the sharpness of Beverley’s gaze. “Finish the sentence, Peter.”

I breathe in and out, carefully. “That’s not what I need from you.”

Beverley goes very still in her seat, eyes gleaming in the dim lighting, and Nightingale stares at me, arrested. 

I keep going, because now that I’ve let the words out they won’t stop coming, flowing out of me as though a dam has burst. “I know I scared you again, and I’m sorry, I am--but I don’t need you to tear through the city like a pair of avenging Furies, I _never_ wanted that, I just--I just want you _here._ ”

“We _are_ here,” Beverley says, more gently this time, less defensive. “We came out of the briefing at Belgravia and came straight here, and we haven’t left since. No one is planning on being a--what was it? An avenging Fury.”

Nightingale coughs. “To be fair, Alexander might’ve had a word or two on what he considered to be an appropriate and legal response to today’s events.”

“Mm,” Beverley concedes. 

“The DPS were also quite emphatic. As was Sahra. And your mother,” Nightingale exhales. “And despite my...frustration, I somehow knew it wasn’t what you would want. Vengeance, I mean.”

“No,” I say, something easing inside of me. “No, I don’t.”

“Well, I still do,” Beverley says rebelliously, shrugging when we both give her looks at this. “Look, I’m a literal goddess, it’s part of the job description--but I can refrain from seeking out vengeance, I suppose. On this occasion.”

I have to smile. “That’s really generous of you, Bev.”

“Thank you,” Beverley says, playing it up, and we all snort, the tension relieved, at least momentarily. 

I try to sit up a little more in bed and hiss in displeasure, having jolted my ribs more than they like. “Fuck.”

Beverley’s already half out of her seat at this, and Nightingale’s not far behind. “Are you in pain?” she asks, worried. “Do you need us to call a nurse?”

“No, no, I’m fine,” I promise, waving them off. 

“Are you sure,” Beverley presses me. “You’re not trying to be the tough man and grit your way through the pain?”

“No,” I say. “Dr. Walid already gave me the lecture on not skimping on the pain medication. Apparently it can lead to pneumonia somehow. I was pretty doped up at that moment so I didn’t quite follow the logic, but I trust him.”

The hesitation before I continue is a reflex, but Beverley’s already told me not to be the tough man, and the same principle applies to this too, I reckon. 

And I’m realizing that I _want_ to tell them. They’ve both woken me up from my nightmares, held me in the dark when I was shaking too hard to talk. Being honest now isn’t--or shouldn’t be--a bridge too far, not anymore. 

“Peter?” Nightingale asks. “Is there something wrong?”

I’ve been silent for too long, so I clear my throat and say. “No, it’s nothing. Just, um, speaking of Dr. Walid, he said that he would come by in the morning with a friend of his. She’s a counselor, specializes in trauma. Assault victims, war veterans, that sort of thing.” My throat feels very tight, I cough once, to ease some of the pressure. My hands are picking nervously at the blanket over my lap. “She’s even part-fae, apparently, which is good. Means I can talk to her about the job without her thinking I need to be sectioned.”

I’m just babbling now, so I stop myself, take a long, careful breath, and look at them both. 

I don’t know quite what I was afraid of seeing when I told them, but it’s not there--there’s nothing in their faces but that endless compassion, the same looks I get when I wake up teary-eyed from a nightmare so awful I can’t put it in words. 

“Is it Dr. Arlene Cross?” Nightingale asks me, thoughtfully. 

“Yeah, that’s the name he gave me.”

Nightingale hums. “Abdul met her a few years ago at one of the Casterbrook open houses, she’s been helping him with his genetic project. He speaks of her quite highly.”

“Yeah, I figured that’s a good sign,” I say. “And I, uh, I could probably use the help, what with the inside of my head being a bit of a mess.”

Understatement of the century, frankly. 

“Oh, Peter,” Beverley says, moving from her chair and taking my hand as she sits on the edge of the bed. “This is a good thing.”

“Of course it is,” Nightingale says firmly. “Although...if you need some space for a time, that can be arranged. If you need it.”

I stare at him, baffled. “Space from what?”

Beverley’s eyes have narrowed. “Thomas, don’t start being an idiot now.”

“I am not, I am just pointing out--” Nightingale starts, sounding both harrassed and unhappy in equal measure, and the penny finally drops. 

“I don’t want to break up with you, are you mad?” I demand, affronted.

It’s too dark to tell for sure, but the tone in Nightingale’s voice tells me his ears are burning red, the way they do whenever he’s having an emotion he’s uncomfortable acknowledging in public. “It--if you needed to be rid of additional complications, I would understand,” he tries, and Beverley snorts. 

“You’re not a complication,” I insist. “I want you here. We both do, right?” I look to Beverley for support, which she gives immediately. 

“Of course we do,” Beverley says. “I couldn’t have gotten through this last year without you, and now that Peter’s still a magnet for trouble--”

“Oi,” I say, but without any real heat behind it. 

“You’re in a hospital bed, you don’t get to protest,” Beverley tells me without missing a beat, and then in a softer voice to Nightingale, she finishes, “Thomas. Don’t make all three of us miserable just because you think you should be all noble and self-sacrificing. It’s a fucking terrible look.”

Nightingale finally breaks, smiling reluctantly. “Well, we can’t have _that_ ,” he says dryly. He looks from me to Bev and then back again, his expression more tentative as he says, “If you’re quite sure…”

“Thomas.” I put a bit of steel into my tone. “Come here.” I pat the free space on the other side of my bed, the side that Beverley isn’t occupying. 

Nightingale comes over, and once he’s carefully perched on his side, I reach out and tug him down to me with a fistful of his waistcoat. 

He obligingly leans in, right up close to where I can feel his breath coming in warm puffs of air against my lips. “I want you here, okay?” I tell him, the words meant to be firm, but instead coming out soft and sincere. 

I kiss him then, slow and lush, my skin prickling all over as I realize that Beverley’s watching this, that this is the first time I’ve ever kissed Nightingale in front of her, that this feels like--like an oath, a promise all on its own. 

Nightingale looks rather dazed when I finally pull back, blinking down at me, his mouth still parted. 

“All right?” I ask him, a little breathless--and not just because of my ribs. 

Nightingale blinks again, slowly, and nods. “Yes,” he says, clearing his throat. “If you’ll both have me, then--yes. Of course.”

“Good,” Beverley says, sounding pleased. She then moves to lean in above me, Nightingale smoothly pulling back to give her room, both of them being so careful not to jar my ribs. “And Peter?”

I’m suddenly very aware of the scent of her perfume, that my mouth still feels wet and a little tender from my kiss with Nightingale just now--the one that she’d seen, my brain helpfully interjects, and I have no idea why the thought causes a spark of excitement, I really don’t.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t care what trouble you find yourself in,” she says, her voice hushed. “I care that you come back to us when it’s over. I can handle anything so long as you do that, okay?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I promise.”

And when Beverley kisses me, her mouth soft and sweet on mine, I reach out and fumble for Nightingale's hand, strong and warm in mine as the three of us cling to each other, safe and sound together in the dark.

Epilogue:

“Have you got sunscreen on?” I ask Nightingale, lounging back on my elbows in the soft green grass.

He doesn’t actually roll his eyes at me, but it’s a near thing. “Yes, Peter, I’ve put on sunscreen.”

“Because sun damage is a real risk, you know, especially on sunny days like this,” I continue piously. 

“So your mother keeps warning all of us,” Nightingale says, amused. 

It’s true. As this summer’s temperatures continue to climb, my mum has been watching all of us like a hawk, firmly of the belief that no one born in Britain knows how to take care of themselves once the temperature goes over 35 degrees Celsius. 

Today is actually fairly pleasant, there’s a bit of a breeze going and Beverley’s made sure to keep a cool mist coming off her river for us--the perks of having a late afternoon picnic by her banks. 

We’ve been making a point of spending more time here lately, just the three of us. More privacy than at the Folly, for one thing, and Beverley’s been busy this summer with overseeing some repairs to her house. She’s not ready to move out of the Folly just yet, but that day is likely approaching. 

I might move out with her, or I might split my time equally between her house and the Folly’s. We’ll work it out once we get to that point. 

I move to lie down flat on the blanket, hands folded above my chest, and Nightingale’s attention is pulled away from the book in his lap--which he’s not really reading, he hasn’t turned a single page in the last half-hour--to look me over, smiling faintly. 

“What?” I ask, smiling up at him, and Nightingale doesn’t say anything, just lets a finger run over the bare skin right above the waistband of my jeans, exposed by the way my t-shirt’s ridden up. 

“See something you like?” I ask, grinning. 

“Oh, you know,” Nightingale says, his touch light and his smile mischievous, “The view’s not bad.”

I’m about to reply when I hear Beverley returning from the house, and I twist around to see her coming, the gauzy skirt of her long pale blue dress floating about her as she walks, locs piled high on top of her head. 

“Found my Bluetooth speakers,” she calls out to us as she approaches, smiling. She drops down next to me on the blanket and raises an eyebrow. “You two look busy.”

“Oh, you know,” I say. “Just passing the time.”

“I see that,” Beverley says, slipping a hand underneath the hem of my shirt as she leans in to kiss me hello. I shiver a little bit at feeling both of them touching me at the same time--it’s a weak spot of mine that Beverley and Nightingale have done their best to exploit, these last few months. Not that I’m complaining. 

But, seeing as none of us are much for being exhibitionists in public--private is a different story--we eventually settle down, and Beverley starts fiddling with the speakers, a gift from Oberon. 

Tilting my head up, and feeling the sun soaking into my bones, I’m thinking about the merits of taking a short nap when I hear a familiar song playing through the speakers. 

As Billie Holliday croons, young and optimistic in love for once, I open my eyes, shading them from the song. “Hey, Bev--do you mind changing the song?”

“Sure,” Beverley says, after only a brief pause, and I know she and Nightingale are sharing a look over my head. “You don’t like it?”

“Nah, that’s not it,” I promise, relaxing as Janelle Monae’s latest album comes on. “Just ready to hear something different, that’s all.”

Beverley’s hand sinks into my hair, rubbing at my scalp comfortingly, as I hear the rustle of Nightingale turning the pages of his book, his free hand resting on my knee. I don’t say anything after that, I don’t need to--I can just lie here with them both, enjoying the afternoon sun, secure in the knowledge that this is exactly where I ought to be.


End file.
